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Digitized by the Internet Archive
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https://archive.org/details/reollectionsofirOOjohn
RECOLLECTIONS OF
AN IRISH REBEL
■J*
THE FENIAN MOVEMENT
ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. METHODS OF
WORK IN IRELAND AND IN THE BRITISH
ARMY. WHY IT FAILED TO
ACHIEVE ITS MAIN OBJECT.
BUT EXERCISED GREAT
INFLUENCE ON IRE-
LAND'S FUTURE
PERSONALITIES OF THE ORGANIZATION
The Clan-na-Gael and the
Rising of Easter Week, 1916
A PERSONAL NARRATIVE
by
JOHN DEVOY
CONTENTS.
Introduction. All Irish History Points to the Necessity
of Separation from the British Empire .... 1
PART I.
Chapter
I The Gloom of the 'Fifties 6
II Fenianism Started in America 17
III Burial of Terence Bellew McManus 22
IV The Movement Spreads 26
V The Feud with the Sullivans 36
VI The "Irish People" 41
VII Important Events in 1864 47
VIII When Billy Keogh for once was Merciful 50
PART II.
IX "The Year of Action" 55
X Getting Ready for the Fight 60
XI The English Government Strikes 69
XII Millen's Brief Authority 73
XIII The Rescue of Stephens 77
XIV The Fight Postponed 88
XV The Council of War 98
XVI The Last Chance Thrown Away 107
XVII Fenianism Fighting for its Life 112
XVTII The Catholic Church and Fenianism 118
PART III.
XIX Fenianism in the British Army 128
XX "Pagan" O'Leary 133
XXI How the British Army was "Organized" 140
XXII "Organization" Systematized in the Army 145
XXIII John Boyle O'Reilly 152
XXIV The Soldiers on Trial 160
PART IV.
XXV The Rising Doomed from the Start 185
XXVI Stepaside and Glencullen 193
XXVII Filgate's Personal Narrative 199
ii CONTENTS.
XXVIII The Disaster at Tallaght 203
XXIX The Fighting in Cork 207
XXX Knockadoon and Kilclooney Wood 213
XXXI Tipperary's Effort Failed 219
XXXII The Siege of Kilmallock 223
XXXIII Part Played by Clare 229
XXXIV Some Other Fiascoes 232
PART V.
XXXV The "Erin's Hope" Expedition 235
XXXVI The Manchester Rescue 237
XXXVII The Manchester Martyrs 244
XXXVIII The Clerkenwell Explosion 248
XXXIX The Catalpa Rescue 251
XL The Fenians and the Irish Language 261
PART VI.
XLI John O'Mahony 266
XLII James Stephens, C. O. I. R 272
XLIII John O'Leary 280
XLIV Thomas Clarke Luby 288
XLV Charles J. Kickham 304
XL VI O 'Donovan Ross a 319
XL VII James J. O'Kelly 333
XL VIII Colonel Ricard O'Sullivan Burke 347
XLIX Thomas Francis Bourke 353
L The O'Donovan Brothers 363
LI My Own Record and Antecedents 372
PART VII.
LII Reorganized Fenianism, 1871-1916 392
LIU Foreign Military Aid for Ireland 397
LIV First Interview with Von Bernstorff 403
LV Casement and the Irish Volunteers 407
LVI Casement Goes to Germany 416
LVII English Plot to Murder Casement 423
LVIII Casement Partially Successful in Germany... 431
LIX "Butting in" on the Clan-na-Gael 442
LX The First Irish Race Convention 449
LXI Ireland Decides on Insurrection 458
LXII German Prerogatives Violated 466
LXIII Casement Executed by the English 472
LXIV The Philosophy of "Easter Week" 479
ILLUSTRATIONS
Devoy, John Frontispiece
Davis, Thomas 10
Mitchel, John 16
Denieffe, Joseph 20
Kelly, Colonel Thomas J 58
Stephens, James 78
O'Reilly, John Boyle 152
Manchester Martyrs 244
Breslin, John J 256
O'Mahony, Colonel John 266
O'Leary, John 280
Luby, Thomas Clarke 288
Kickham, Charles J 304
Rossa, Jeremiah O'Donovan 320
"Cuba Five", The 330
Burke, Colonel Ricard O'S 348
Clarke, Thomas J 392
Casement, Sir Roger 408
MacDermott, Sean 458
Connolly, James 464
Pearse, Padraic 474
PREFACE
In the death of John Devoy (born 1842— died 1923) there
passed from this mortal stage one of the most remarkable
figures in Irish history. Blessed with many talents, he devoted
them all, tirelessly and unselfishly, to one idea, and to one ideal.
For more than sixty years, in storm and in sunshine, in sick-
ness and in health, he dreamed and toiled and worked for the
cause of Ireland a Nation. His services covered a wide range of
activities and only with the passing years will the full effects
of his efforts be known and appreciated.
Irish patriots, as far apart in their methods as William
O'Brien and Padraic H. Pearse, have appraised him as among
the greatest of his race.
Mr. O'Brien, in his "Recollections", after ascribing to him
and Michael Davitt the chief credit for the Land League, said:
"The part played by his co-founder of the Land League
movement, Mr. Devoy, is less known, because the terms on
which he was amnestied forbade him to return to Ireland,
and consequently exposed him to misunderstandings of
the situation at home, which eventually made him a bitter
enemy of the semi-parliamentary, semi-agrarian revolution
he had so influential a part in launching. His hostility
in later days, however, ought not to make us forgetful of
the sagacity and courage with which he first rallied even the
extremest of the extreme men to give a full and fair trial
to Parnell and his methods. Mr. Devoy was a born con-
spirator, and, like all born conspirators, can never be meas-
ured at his true value by the public. But it is certain that,
in his own special department of swearing into the Revolu-
tionary Brotherhood the soldiers of the Dublin Garrison,
in 1865, he was perhaps the most dangerous enemy of Eng-
land in the entire Fenian body, and, in some respects, not
altogether unworthy to rank not very far beneath Wolfe
Tone."
In the booklet issued as a souvenir of the O'Donovan Rossa
funeral, on August 1, 1915, there is a preface written by Padraic
H. Pearse (who himself after Easter Week, 1916, became one
of Ireland's patriot martyrs) which contains the following char-
acteristic sketches of the most prominent of the Fenian leaders:
"O'Donovan Rossa was not the greatest of the Fenian
generation, but he was its most typical man. He was the
man that to the masses of his countrymen then and since
stood most starkly and plainly for the Fenian idea. More
lovable and understandable than the cold and enigmatical
Stephens, better known than the shy and sensitive Kickham,
more human than the scholarly and chivalrous O'Leary,
more picturesque than the able and urbane Luby, older and
ii
PREFACE
more prominent than the man who, when the time comes to
write his biography, will be recognized as the greatest of
the Fenians — John Devoy."
In these "Recollections" John Devoy has recorded much of
the intimate but hitherto unwritten story of the Fenian move-
ment. He tells this story of that time with clearness and dis-
tinction so far as it can be done within the compass of a single
volume. For a more comprehensive grasp of what that extraordi-
nary force meant to Irish national progress one has to read many
other books, including those referred to in this narrative, which
describe the intolerable political conditions in Ireland which the
Fenians had to combat. Such further study is also essential to
an appraisal of the varied handicaps under which they operated
and to a due appreciation of the lofty patriotism, indomitable
courage and immolation of self which animated them to chal-
lenge, almost unarmed, the might of Britain.
The lines by John Kells Ingram on the men of 'Ninety-Eight
can, with equal appositeness, be applied to those of the 'Sixty-
Seven period:
"They rose in dark and evil days
To right their native land;
They kindled here a living blaze
That nothing shall withstand".
Volumes have been and others could be written on the ac-
tivities of numerous individuals cited in these "Recollections" of
Devoy, to whom, because of the nature of this work, he has made
but passing reference. In the case of Devoy himself many
events of momentous importance in the struggle for the estab-
lishment of an Irish Republic and also for the preservation of
liberty in the United States, in which he played a conspicuous
part, are, for a similar reason, either not dealt with herein or
received but casual mention.
Born in one of the darkest periods of his country's history,
John Devoy lived to see her emerge in great part from her dis-
tress and advance a long way on the road to real independence.
That much of that result is to be attributed to him, is well
known to those who have been in touch with Ireland's efforts
to secure national freedom.
Stern, unbending, implacable in his course, he was person-
ally lovable, gentle and simple. To the qualities and character
of a leader of men, he added in his personal relationships the
simplicity and likeability of youth. How much he accomplished
of the great task to which he devoted himself, cannot yet with
PREFACE
iii
exactitude be reckoned. Suffice it to say now that he set a
splendid example of devotion and unselfishness to the rest of
his race that cannot be overlooked, and has carved his name
deeply upon the stone on which are recorded the names of those
who live long after they have passed into the grave.
Peace and honor to his memory.
Daniel F. Cohalan.
INTRODUCTION.
ALL IRISH HISTORY POINTS TO THE NECESSITY OF
SEPARATION FROM THE BRITISH EMPIRE.
The Fenian Movement, which had its inception in Ireland in
the Fifties of the nineteenth century, was a continuation of the
struggle which had been maintained throughout seven hundred
years against the English invaders.
Augustin Thierry, in his History of the Norman Conquest of
England, describes the character of this struggle better than any
foreign writer ever did before or since. He quotes from a letter
written to Pope John XXII in the fourteenth century, by Donal
O'Neill, Prince of Ulster, as follows:
"We cherish, at the bottom of our hearts, an inveterate
hatred, produced by lengthened recollections of injustices —
by the murder of our fathers, brothers and nearest kindred —
and which will not be extinguished in our time, nor in that
of our children — so that, as long as we have life, we will fight
against them, without regret, or remorse, in defence of our
rights. We will not cease to fight against and annoy them,
until the day when they themselves, for want of power, shall
have ceased to do us harm, and the Supreme Judge shall
have taken just vengeance on their crimes; which, we firmly
hope, will sooner or later come to pass. Until then, we will
make war upon them unto death, to recover the independence,
which is our natural right; being compelled thereto by very
necessity, and willing rather to brave danger like men, than
to languish under insult."
Thierry, commenting on this letter, says:
"This promise of war unto death, made upwards of four
hundred years ago, is not yet forgotten; and it is a melan-
choly fact, but worthy of remark, that in our own days blood
has flowed in Ireland on account of the old quarrel of the
conquest. The period in futurity when the quarrel shall be
terminated, it is impossible to foresee; and aversion for Eng-
land, its government, its manners and its language, is still
the native passion of the Irish race. From the day of the
invasion, the will of that race of men has been constantly
opposed to the will of its masters; it has detested what they
have loved, and loved what they have detested. * * *
This unconquerable obstinacy — this lengthened remem-
brance of departed liberty — this faculty of preserving and
nourishing through the ages of physical misery and suffer-
ing, the thought of that which is no more — of never despair-
ing of a constantly vanquished cause, for which many gen-
erations 'have successively, and in vain, perished in the field,
and by the executioner — is perhaps the most extraordinary
and the greatest example that a people has ever given."
Thierry had access only to English and Latin authorities, yet
he acquired a fine grasp of the Irish struggle, and had a clearer
2
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
insight into the real meaning and character of events than per-
haps any modern historian.
Strictly speaking, the Irish did not rise in every generation,
but they rose so often that it amounted practically to that. The
chief difficulty of the Irish in every effort to overthrow English
rule was lack of arms, which they always had to procure outside
of Ireland, and they never had enough at any one time to equip
all the men who were willing to fight.
A person ignorant of history on looking at the map of Europe
might reasonably conclude that Great Britain and Ireland, two
islands situated close together to the north-west of that con-
tinent, ought naturally be friends. They would have been if in-
habited by the same races, imbued with common interests and
identical aims. But, the descendants of the Norman-French con-
querors of England had the same motives in invading Ireland as
their ancestors had in subduing the Anglo-Saxons. They wanted
land for their younger sons, and sent them to Ireland to carve
out estates with their swords and make vassals of the owners.
The Saxons submitted at once because the feudal system already
existed in England. The mass of the people there were already
serfs, while in Ireland the land belonged to the Clan, the clans-
men were freemen, and the Chiefs were elected by their respec-
tive Clans.
The Anglo-Normans sought to impose the feudal system on
Ireland, and the struggle waged for three hundred years was
mainly due to this. It was, on the part of the Irish, a fight for
existence; and, on that of the English, an effort to exterminate a
race that refused to submit. All Irish history bears out Augustin
Thierry's diagnosis of the case.
The last battle of a virtually independent Ireland was fought
in 1603 under Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell at Kinsale,
where a small Spanish garrison was besieged by an English
army. The Irish went down to defeat in their effort to relieve
their Spanish allies. After that disaster Ireland was at Eng-
land's mercy, and the broken remnants of the Ulster army were
scattered all over Munster. Elizabeth confiscated a lot of land
and planted English settlers upon it. That was the beginning of
Anglo-Irish landlordism.
In 1608, James I began the Plantation of Ulster, in order to
Anglicize the Northern Province, although the majority of the
new Colonists were Scotch. When the Irish rose, in 1641, it was
in part only for Nationality, a considerable number of them
wishing to restore the Stuarts to the throne of England, but
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
3
those favoring Independence were in the majority. Cromwell's
massacres included both sections. His order, "To Hell or to
Connacht", was equally impartial. It was not entirely success-
ful, and Prendergast, in his "Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland",
says that many thousands of his soldiers planted in Ireland mar-
ried Irish women, and that many of their sons fought on the
side of James II in the two years war that followed his removal
from the English Throne.
The Penal Laws followed for nearly a century in an attempt
to deprive the Irish of the right to exercise the religion of their
choice, to deprive them of the light of learning and rob them of
their possessions. This horrible code was described by Edmund
Burke as "a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as
well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation
of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature it-
self, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."
The 18 years of the semi-independence of the Irish Parlia-
ment from 1782 to 1800 was won by the Volunteers by a threat
of force at a time when England's hands were full and she had
no army able to cope with them. This Irish Parliament did not
represent the mass of the people, as all Catholics were debarred
from entering it, but it did wonderful work for Irish industry
and commerce, and that was William Pitt's reason for destroying
it by the most colossal bribery and corruption.
The Rebellion of 1798 was Pitt's excuse, but his real motive
was the destruction of a commercial and industrial rival, which
Ireland was steadily becoming. The United Irishmen who
planned the Insurrection were led entirely by Protestants, and
the greater number of the Rebels in Ulster were Presbyterians
descended from the Scotch and English Colonists planted on the
soil by James I.
The agitation for Catholic Emancipation and for Repeal of
the Union, under Daniel O'Connell, was entirely pacifist. The
"monster meetings" addressed by "The Liberator" were among
the greatest popular demonstrations in history. One of his
favorite remarks to the immense throngs was: "He that com-
mits a crime gives strength to the enemy." Yet England's answer
to his peaceful demand was to arrest and imprison O'Connell and
several of his colleagues, including Dr. Gray, proprietor of the
Freeman's Journal, who was a Protestant.
In the harvest that just preceded the great Famine of 1847,
Ireland produced enough food to supply double its then popula-
tion. It was the potato crop only that failed, and the production
of wheat, oats, barley, cattle, sheep and pigs was normal. John
4
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Stuart Mill, the greatest political economist of his time, and an
Englishman, asserted that Ireland was capable of producing suf-
ficient on her own soil to feed 20,000,000 people. But the food
necessary to sustain life had to be sold by the farmers to pay
the rackrents. A native Government would have prohibited its
exportation, but the British only resorted to makeshifts in the
form of trivial public works, — most of them economically worth-
less. Instead of relieving the food shortage, it undertook to re-
lieve a money shortage which did not exist, and the farmers
who had sold their crops to pay the exorbitant rents were only
given an opportunity to earn a miserable pittance making roads.
England had never any right to rule Ireland. By the exer-
cise of force she compelled the Irish people to permit her to
govern their country; then failed to perform the essential func-
tions of government. And, while more than a million Irish
people were starving or suffering from famine fever, the English
press read them solemn lectures on political economy and printed
columns of claptrap about getting rid of the "surplus popula-
tion." Then the London Times, which always voices the prevail-
ing opinion in England, printed an article rejoicing over the dis-
aster by saying: "They are going! They are going! The Irish
are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland
as a red Indian on the shores of Manhattan".
William E. Gladstone, in his speech in the House of Commons
introducing the Bill to Disestablish the Irish Protestant Church,
gave the key to English policy in Ireland in the clearest possible
terms by saying he was led to do justice to Ireland by the inten-
sity of Fenianism. And he explained what he meant by citing
the Rising of 1867, the Manchester Rescue, the Clerkenwell Ex-
plosion and the successful resistance to eviction at Ballycohey,
County Tipperary. Gladstone had read all of Daniel O'Connell's
speeches eloquently pleading for justice to Ireland and had
listened to some of them; he was the most enlightened and
liberal English statesman of the nineteenth century, but this
was a frank admission that peaceful pleas had no effect on him
and that he was only influenced by bloodshed, explosions and
violent breaches of the law. And what he called "justice to Ire-
land" was not the concession of her demand for Freedom, but
the partial redress of a grievance for which Ireland had not asked.
The Protestant Church was technically disestablished, but was
endowed permanently by funds raised by the sale of the Glebe
Lands. Gladstone's confession was a tacit admission that Eng-
land was not actuated by a sense of justice; no Irishman could
have made a stronger argument for the use of physical force.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
5
If England's policy were governed by real statesmanship, her
people and rulers would have recognized long ago that Ireland
will never be satisfied until she regains her absolute indepen-
dence, and that such independent status is the first essential to
lasting friendship between the two countries.
History proves that the only remedy for all of Ireland's ills is
Total Separation from England and the setting up of an Inde-
pendent Government having no political connection whatever
with the British Empire. Of course, it is manifest that as Eng-
land grew stronger and Ireland weaker as a result of the alien,
unjust and tyrannical system which England imposed on her,
political separation could not have been achieved without foreign
aid. And even were independence thus obtained, an alliance with
England's conqueror would be necessary until Ireland could build
up sufficient strength to defend her sovereignty.
These were, in substance, the reasons which influenced the
action of the Fenian Leaders. Their predecessors had sought
and obtained the aid of Spain and France, and that example
was followed in seeking the aid of Germany in the World War.
The instalment of Freedom which Ireland has secured is due
entirely to this traditional policy. No concession made by Eng-
land completely settled any Irish question, — and she never con-
ceded anything except through the use or menace of force. It is
a safe prediction that she never will, and that the principles and
policy of the United Irishmen and the Fenians are the only ones
that can eventually win.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
THE GLOOM OF THE 'FIFTIES.
After Emancipation and the Anti-Tithe Movement, a Period of
Depression Set in — Cardinal Cullen Exercised an Evil In-
fluence on Politics and Education — "National" Schools
Denationalized Irish Children — Catholic University Filled
with English Professors.
In order to understand the Fenian Movement, it is necessary
to give a bird's-eye view of the situation which preceded it.
The 'Ninety-Eight Movement, although it failed in the field,
left a spirit behind it which influenced the whole course of events
during the nineteenth century. Robert Emmet's insurrection in
1803 was followed by an agitation for Catholic Emancipation led
by Daniel O'Connell, and the Catholic Association which included
many of the leading Protestants. Although a peaceful agitation,
it was characterized by many demonstrations which alarmed the
British Government. The Irish soldiers of the British Army,
who had played a leading part in the expulsion of Napoleon's
Armies from Spain, showed a strongly mutinous spirit. As they
marched from garrison to garrison, they passed many Emanci-
pation meetings, and quite a common incident was their throwing
up of their caps and cheering for Emancipation. As the agita-
tion grew in strength, this movement became more intense. The
Duke of Wellington, who knew the Irish soldier, became Premier
a little before the Catholic Relief Bill was introduced in Parlia-
ment. He was not a politician and was guided entirely by ex-
pediency. His chief motto was, "His Majesty's Government must
be carried on"; — meaning that any measures necessary to that
end must be passed. The Relief Bill was passed by an unwilling
English Parliament, but it did not really provide for Catholic
Emancipation. It only enabled educated Catholics to enter
Parliament and obtain positions under the Government, and left
the mass of the people just as they had been before it; and it
contained a clause which disfranchised the Forty Shilling Free-
holders, the men whose courage and self-sacrifice had elected
O'Connell as Member for Clare in 1828. O'Connell's consent to
this reactionary measure was a blot on his career, but he was
not a democrat. King William IV, who was a narrow-minded
6
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL 7
bigot, objected to signing the bill, and Wellington said to him:
"I could reconquer Ireland, but it would be a mighty incon-
venient thing for Your Majesty's Foreign Policy." The King then
relented and signed the bill. Notwithstanding its defects, it was
hailed as a triumph all over Ireland. It was a common toast to
celebrate the event:
"Here's to the goose that grew the quill,
That signed th' Emancipation Bill."
In the meantime, the Anti-Tithe agitation started and con-
tinued until after "Emancipation." This movement consisted
mainly of resistance to the collection of tithes. Crops were seized
when payment was refused. One of the popular songs at the
time had these lines:
"We'll mount a guard on barn and yard,
And we'll give them grape for grain."
The songs sung by the people are the best exponents of their
feeling and those most popular in the early part of the Nine-
teenth Century, although crude in form, were as patriotic as
those in the Young Ireland period. The immediate descendants
of the United Irishmen in Kildare sang such ballads about
'Ninety-Eight and expressed their contempt for George IV in the
following rhyme:
"As I was a-walkin' one day on the Coombe
I met King George an' he blackenin' shoes,
He rubbed an' he scrubbed an' he blackened so fine
That I gave him three ha'pence for blackenin' mine."
The favorite '98 ballad around Naas celebrated the Battle of
Prosperous, where the barrack was burned down and only one
man (an officer) escaped the slaughter by climbing over a wall.
It began thus:
"On the twenty-fourth of May
Before the break of day
We all got under arms and to Prosperous made way.
Steadily we marched under Captain Farrell's orders;
It's in the town we halted and set it in a blaze.
Bullets they were flying,
Soldiers groaning, dying.
Smoke to the skies arising
And Swayne expiring there."
I heard an old man who fought in the Rebellion sing it and
my grandfather taught me a portion of the words, but I found it
later in a small volume of similar ballads, all crude but full of
the fighting spirit.
At Carrickshock, County Kilkenny, in 1831, a body of men
working in the fields, seeing a detachment of police returning
8
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
from one of the customary seizures, were filled with sudden pas-
sion, rushed on the Peelers with scythes and pitchforks, and
killed twenty-two of them in a few minutes. There were several
other such incidents on a smaller scale. So the Government in-
troduced a bill with the ostensible object of abolishing the tithes.
It did not abolish them, but made them a rent charge on the
estate. The landlord had to pay the tithes, and he added them
to the rent and sometimes increased the amount. So that the
tithes continued to be collected, but the stoppage of the seizure of
crops removed much of the irritation. Seven-eighths of the
Irish people were Catholics, and among the Protestants were
hundreds of thousands of Presbyterians and other Non-Conform-
ists who were forced to pay towards the upkeep of the Episcopal
Church, so that these Non-Conformists sympathized strongly
with the Catholic resistance to the collection.
O'Connell, during the campaign for the Repeal of the Union,
to a large extent demoralized the people by his constant repeti-
tion of the statement that "No amount of human liberty is worth
the shedding of a single drop of human blood". He called his
organization the "Loyal National Repeal Association".
On one occasion he wrote in a lady's autograph album:
"Oh, Erin, shall it e'er be mine
To raise my hand in battle line,
To lift my victor head and see
Thy hills, thy vales, thy altars free?
One glimpse of this is all I crave
Between my cradle and my grave."
This might lead one to think that he had in the back of
his mind some idea of using physical force. Militant threats
which he voiced in some of his speeches conveyed the same
impression, but the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from his
general policy is that he was a pronounced pacifist and loyalist.
He had a habit of saying to the crowds at the Repeal meetings:
"If I want you to meet me at such a time, will you answer my
call?", or words to that effect, and a voice in the crowd would
shout: "Will we bring our pikes, sir?" to which he always replied
with a variation of his "No drop of blood" motto.
The test came at the projected meeting at Clontarf in 1843.
The Government waited until all preparations for the meeting
had been made, then "proclaimed" it, and massed a large body
of troops in Dublin for its suppression. Had the meeting been
held, there would have been unquestionably a massacre of the
people, although there was some doubt about the troops obeying
orders. But, O'Connell sent messengers out along the roads lead-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
9
ing to Dublin to warn the men marching in to return, which
they did very unwillingly.
In 1841, Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, John B. Dillon,
and other young men of great intellectual capacity had joined
O'Connell's Repeal Association. The next year they established
the Nation, and through it conducted a campaign of intense
nationalism. This group, which later included John Mitchel,
Thos. Francis Meagher, Richard O'Gorman, Michael Doheny,
James Clarence Mangan, Richard Dalton Williams, Thomas
Devin Reilly and others, became known as the Young Irelanders,
and their influence on the national life of Ireland was deep and
abiding.
Then the Split in the Repeal Movement in 1847, when the
Young Ireland leaders seceded, altered its whole character.
John O'Connell (the "Liberator's" son) , an incompetent man, as-
sumed to speak for his father, whose health was rapidly failing,
and his arrogance offended the high-spirited Young Irelanders.
These men had been carrying on, through newspaper articles,
poetry, and the "Library of Ireland" (a series of small historical
and biographical works) , propaganda which really aimed at the
use of physical force. One has only to glance at their writings
to see this; but they made no preparation whatever for the
eventual use of force. Finally the great Famine of 1847 forced
their hand, and they seceded from Conciliation Hall after spec-
tacular debates, during which Thomas Francis Meagher deliv-
ered his famous "Sword Speech". Soon after the secession, a
Split occurred among the Young Irelanders through the quarrel
between Charles Gavan Duffy and John Mitchel. Mitchel started
a rival paper to the Nation called the United Irishman, and
openly preached rebellion. Mitchel's articles advocated a de-
structive policy, his aim being the utter eradication of all the
rottenness superimposed on Ireland by English Governments over
the centuries. While the great mass of the rank and file of the
people remained loyal to O'Connell, very many of the younger
men were converted to the views of the Young Irelanders; but the
conflict between Duffy and Mitchel largely nullified their propa-
ganda. Mitchel admitted in New York, in a conversation with
the released Fenian prisoners just arrived from England in 1871,
that, looking back over that period, he believed the secession
was a mistake; that O'Connell himself was then doomed; that
his son John was an impossible leader, and that the leadership
would have naturally devolved on the Young Irelanders if they
had had only the patience to wait.
John Mitchel started a new movement that alarmed the
British Government. He established in the Ulster Counties, the
10
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Protestant Repeal Associations, and was making steady progress
when the Government decided to take drastic action. These
bodies included many former Orangemen, and a large number of
Presbyterians, and had they been allowed to go on, could not
have failed to produce salutary effects. But the Government
arrested Mitchel and tried him for Treason-Felony — a term in-
vented by Lord John Russell, the introducer of the bill, for the
purpose mainly of degrading Mitchel and classing opponents of
English Rule with ordinary criminals. The scene in Green Street
Courthouse on the day of Mitchel's conviction was sensational,
many prominent men present standing up, raising their hands,
and saying in substance: Mitchel, we are with you! That made
some believe that a rescue was intended, but none was at-
tempted.
Then the utter failure of William Smith O'Brien's attempt at
insurrection in Tipperary, called contemptuously by the English
press, "The Widow McCormick's Cabbage Garden Rebellion",
disheartened the people, whose spirit had already been shattered
by the Famine, and the exodus had already begun.
John Mitchel, in his "Last Conquest of Ireland — Perhaps",
records an incident typical of the period. At Killenaule, in
the County Tipperary, John B. Dillon (father of the Land League
leader) was in command of a body of Smith O'Brien's followers
who had thrown up a barricade across the village street. A
body of the 8th Royal Irish Hussars approached; the officer rode
up and ordered the barricade to be opened. Dillon, who had his
orders from Smith O'Brien, replied that if the officer gave his
word of honor that he had no warrants for arrest, he might pass.
The Hussar captain, however, in an imperious tone, demanded
to be let through. James Stephens — then a young man of
twenty- one — immediately raised his rifle and covered him; his
finger was on the trigger. But Dillon ordered Stephens to lower
his rifle, and having removed some of the carts, Dillon himself
led the officer's horse through as a sign that the soldiers were
not to be molested. Thus ended that affair. Many years later,
I was told by old soldiers that the men of the troop, who
were all Irish, were ready to join the people if they resisted, but
of course Dillon didn't know this. A large number of people were
looking on waiting to see the result of the incident, and they
decided that the Rebels didn't want to fight. Had Stephens been
allowed to shoot the captain, the insurrection would have been
begun then and there, with a small victory for the Rebels, and
the 'Forty-Eight Movement certainly would not have ended with-
out a standup fight. A physical force movement in Ireland which
THOMAS DAVIS
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
11
ends without a fight has a more demoralizing influence on the
people than a fight that fails.
The Young Ireland leaders were arrested, tried by packed
juries, and transported to Van Dieman's Land, with the excep-
tion of Duffy, who remained in Ireland, and a few others like
Michael Doheny, Richard O'Gorman and John Blake Dillon, who
escaped to America; so that the people were left without lead-
ers. A period of utter depression followed the Young Ireland
Movement.
Then in the early 'Fifties an agitation for Tenant Right was
started. It was led by Charles Gavan Duffy, George Henry
Moore, Frederick Lucas (an English convert to Catholicism), and
John Francis Maguire, editor of the Cork Examiner. One of its
chief features was independent opposition by a group of Mem-
bers in Parliament, and another was the holding of public meet-
ings throughout the country. Protestant farmers were joining
the movement in large numbers, and this alarmed the English
Government, because a union of Catholics and Protestants for
any purpose might lead to future union for Independence. One
incident was characteristic. Rev. David Bell, an Ulster Presby-
terian minister, who later became a Fenian and Editor of the
Irish National Liberator in London, was holding an umbrella dur-
ing a shower of rain over a Catholic priest who was making a
speech, and the English Government determined to stop this
fraternizing between the adherents of both religions.
Lord John Russell introduced a measure in Parliament called
"The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill", which forbade Catholic Bishops
to sign their pastorals with the Cross attached. The British
Government knew very well that every Catholic Bishop in Eng-
land as well as in Ireland would rot in prison rather than obey
this bill if it was enacted into law. But there was a group of
dishonest men among the Irish members of Parliament, led by
John Sadleir, William Keogh and Edmund O'Flaherty. Keogh
had made incendiary speeches at public meetings which were an
incitement to assassination, but he only intended them as bids
for employment under the Government. They seized the oppor-
tunity, by starting an agitation against the Ecclesiastical Titles
Bill. The Catholic Bishops and the great body of the priests fell
into line behind them, and the agitation was turned from the
Land Question to a religious one. This caused the Protestants to
fall out of the Land Movement in large numbers, and that was
precisely what the British Government wanted. Sadleir, Keogh
and O'Flaherty were rewarded for their treachery with Govern-
ment jobs.
12
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Added to the betrayal of the Tenant Right Movement came
the failure of the Tipperary Bank, which proved John Sadleir a
swindler.
The defection "of the rotten Members of Parliament practi-
cally broke up the Tenant Right Movement, but that break-up
had other causes than their action.
Archbishop Paul Cullen (who was later on appointed a Car-
dinal) occupied the Dublin See on the death of Archbishop Mur-
ray. While he was a good Bishop and a strict disciplinarian, he
was a reactionary in politics, and entirely pro-English in senti-
ment. He speedily showed his hand in two ways: one by bitter
opposition to the Tenant Right Movement, and the other in war-
fare on the "National" Schools. Archbishop Murray was called
a Whig by O'Connell, and he was, but he never denounced those
who differed from him in opinion. He was one of the Commis-
sioners of National Education, and his place on the Board was
offered to Archbishop Cullen, who at once refused it. Up to
then, priests from the Cathedral had attended the "Model
Schools" in Marlborough Street (where I was a pupil) on two
days in the week, and four hours of these days were devoted
to religious instruction, the "Protestants" among the pupils be-
ing instructed by ministers of their own church in a smaller
room, and the Presbyterians, who were less numerous, in a little
gallery. Archbishop Cullen ordered the priests not to attend the
schools, so that the Catholic pupils were left without instruction.
He then forbade parents to send their children to schools at-
tended by Protestants, on the ground that sitting with Protes-
tants and receiving instruction through some Protestant teachers
endangered their faith. This order was disobeyed so widely that
after a short time it became a dead letter. He then ordered the
priests to refuse absolution to all parents who sent their children
to the mixed schools.
Two incidents which took place at this time helped Arch-
bishop Cullen in his fight against "mixed education". Inspector
Kavanagh, who wrote a work on arithmetic that was used in
the so-called National Schools, though it was not the regular text
book, issued a public statement endorsing the Archbishop's stand
and was either dismissed or compelled to resign. He was out of
employment for some time, but was later appointed a Professor
in the Catholic University.
Father McGauley, author of a book on Physical Science and
lecturer on the same subject at the Teachers' Training School
in Temple Street, was ordered to resign by the Archbishop and
did so. He issued a public statement in which he said he had
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
13
long been tired of "Cullen's tyranny", married a Protestant
teacher and emigrated to Canada. Inspector Kavanagh's state-
ment, coming from an official of the National Schools, was ac-
cepted by many as a confirmation of the Archbishop's charges,
and the action of Father McGauley was taken as proof that asso-
ciation with Protestants undermined the faith of Catholics. But
during all that time and since, English Catholics were sending
their sons to Oxford and Cambridge for their final degrees. So
separation of the religions in the schools and colleges, on which
Dr. Cullen insisted, was applicable only to Ireland, where sec-
tarian differences were a curse.
The National Schools were established for the express purpose
of denationalizing the children of Ireland. Certain school text
books written by the daughters of Archbishop Whately, were cal-
culated to undermine Irish Nationality. The songs taught to the
children were mostly English. The pupils had to sing "God Save
the Queen" and "Rule Britannia" every day; but Archbishop
Cullen made no objection to that feature of the schools; his
whole objection was to have Protestant and Catholic children
occupy the same seats, or to teachers attending the Training
School.
In order to enforce this new rule, which was adopted only
by a majority of one at the meeting of the Bishops — Archbishop
MacHale of Tuam leading the opposition — parents who refused
to withdraw their children were refused absolution. I remember
well the day when my mother came back from the Cathedral
after refusing to obey the order. So far as the order affected
teachers, it meant that no properly trained teacher could obtain
employment in the schools where the Parish Priest was the
Manager or Patron. This had a very bad effect on primary edu-
cation in Ireland for a whole generation. If Archbishop Cullen
had first provided schools, with competent teachers — which, of
course, would have been a hard task — the bad effect of his action
would not have been so marked. But he was unable to establish
such schools and he did not try.
Archbishop Cullen's action in regard to the Tenant Right
Movement was most unjust and tyrannical. He ordered all priests
to leave the movement, and one of the incidents connected with
this action was the censure or suspension of the Callan Curates,
Father O'Keeffe and Father Tom O'Shea, who were most effective
campaigners. There was great popular sympathy with them, and
even Alexander M. Sullivan attacked Dr. Cullen's action in the
Nation. All Catholic parish priests obeyed the order, except
Father Quade of O'Callaghan's Mills in Clare. This action of
14
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Dr. Cullen encouraged the rotten Members of Parliament in their
treacherous action to break up the movement.
Dr. Cullen's own relatives were largely the chief land grabbers
in Kildare, Carlow, and the Queens County, and others held jobs
under the Government. One of his relatives, O'Ferrall, was for
many years Police Commissioner in Dublin. The Tenant Right
Movement sought only some small reforms in the laws govern-
ing land tenure, which fell very far short of the demands later
made by the Land League. It had no political aims, but he de-
nounced it as bitterly as he afterwards condemned the Fenians.
In the matter of the higher, as distinct from primary educa-
tion, Archbishop Cullen did much better, although he left much
to be desired. It was under his guidance that the Catholic Uni-
versity was established, but it was only Catholic, with very little
Irish in it. He made Dr. Newman (not then a Cardinal) the
Rector, and whether Dr. Newman or the Archbishop was respon-
sible for the appointment of the Professors, they were nearly
all English, mostly converts who had come over to the Catholic
Church during the Oxford Movement.
Stewart was Professor of the Latin language, and Arnold of
Latin and Greek literature. Robertson was Professor of His-
tory and Geography, and so on all along the line. While they
were all very scholarly men, and liberal in their views about
Ireland, they were still most decidedly English and took the pre-
vailing English view of everything in the world at the time.
The only Professors who were Irish were Eugene O'Curry, the
great Gaelic scholar, who was almost equal to his friend and
brother-in-law, John O'Donovan, perhaps the greatest Gaelic
scholar of all time; Hennessy, the Professor of Mathematics, who
was a member of the French Academy of Sciences; and a Dr.
O'Reilly, who taught some branch of medical science. Hennessy's
assistant was an ex-National teacher from Dunmanway, County
Cork, named Hayes, who was almost as great a mathematician as
his distinguished superior. He was practically self-taught, and
obtained his mathematical knowledge in studies made at a turf
fire in his father's little thatched cottage in the evenings after
he had driven home and fed the cows. L'Abbe Schurr, an Alsa-
tian, was the Professor of French, and they could hardly get an
Englishman for that work.
This choice of the professorial staff was equivalent to an ad-
mission that classical scholars could not be found in Ireland,
although it was notorious that many such scholars of great ability
could be found among the Irish priesthood. The Chaplain,
Father Anderdon, was an Englishman, as if no Irish priest could
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
15
be found who was fit for the position. He was a very able, learned
and liberal man, but he was English. Even the University Church,
built beside the University, on Stephens Green, was of the Anglo-
Saxon style of architecture, which was a hybrid, and had gone
out of fashion in England itself. The University and its chapel
were a simple illustration of the surrender of all the old Irish
ideals. It was English in everything in its early stages.
My knowledge of the professorial staff of the University was
derived from attendance at the evening classes which were estab-
lished for a while to enable young men who were not in the Uni-
versity to prepare for matriculation. The professors very gener-
ously undertook to give lectures to the classes. Among those who
were most painstaking was Robertson, the Professor of History
and Geography. He was a very genial old man, and his lectures
were very interesting, but I learned nothing of either geography
or history from him. My geography I learned pretty thoroughly
in the National Schools, which were provided with a splendid
lot of maps, and my history I got from reading at home. One
evening when the Professor was dealing with the Battle of Water-
loo, he said that Wellington was a greater general than Napoleon.
I interrupted him and said: "He was not." I was the youngest
student there, and the others looked at me in amazement at
what they thought my effrontery in contradicting a great
authority on history. But the old professor took it quietly and
asked me: "Why do you say that?" I replied that a general
must be judged, not by one battle, but by his whole military
career; that the French were outnumbered and had the English
beaten until Blucher came up with his Prussians. The old man
said in a tolerant tone: "Well, there is something in that." In
those days it was the English habit to laud Wellington as the
greatest general of history. That theory has died out in England,
because it was utterly inconsistent with the facts.
The University was supported mainly by collections in the
churches. The members of the Dublin Confraternities went
around collecting the money in the various parishes. The people
subscribed according to their means. I gave two-pence a week;
my elder brother four-pence, and my father six-pence a week.
When the Prince of Wales was married in 1862, all the loyalist
shopkeepers in Dublin put up illuminations, and the University
did the same. One of the students, J. P. McDonnell, later editor
of a labor paper in Paterson, N. J., led a group of students which
tore down the illuminations, and he was expelled for doing so.
That brought about a boycott of the University, and hundreds
of families stopped subscribing. This action against young
McDonnell was one of the causes which led to the stoppage of the
16
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
evening classes, but many of the young men had already been
matriculated from them.
On the collapse of the Tenant Right Movement, Ireland for
several years was in a state of political torpor. The people lost
all confidence in peaceful agitation, but had not belief enough
in their own strength to adopt a physical force policy. But while
that was the attitude of the mass of the grown up people, many
of the boys were drinking in the literature of Young Ireland and
adopting the principles of John Mitchel, long before they were
old enough to comprehend the significance of what they were
doing. So that in a few years the country became ripe for a
physical force movement. The dishonest Members of Parliament
at the time all took a pledge on the hustings to vote for Tenant
Right and Catholic Education, but the pledge was valueless, and
after getting into Parliament they did nothing but look for Gov-
ernment jobs for themselves or their constituents. This created
prejudice against Constitutional agitation and made the young
men of the country almost fanatical in their opposition to it.
The last time that the clergy went to extremes in using their
influence over the electorate was during the Parnell Split. The
exposure of the gross intimidation used by the clergy in Meath
in favor of Michael Davitt, exposed by the trial of the petition in
court, put an effectual end to clerical domination in Irish poli-
tics. A wonderful change took place later in the attitude of both
bishops and priests, to which I will refer in a subsequent chapter.
JOHN MITCHEL
CHAPTER II.
FENIANISM STARTED IN AMERICA.
Founded in New York in 1855 — Later Introduced Into Ireland
by Joseph Denieffe — James Fintan Lalor — Stephens Re-
turned from Paris and Established the I. R. B. — Movement
Spread Gradually Through the Country — The "National
Petition".
The Fenian Movement was started, not in Ireland, but in New
York, in 1855, although several small organizations looking to
insurrection existed both in Ireland and America previous to that
time. James Fintan Lalor might be said to be the real Father of
Fenianism, as well as of the Land League. An exceedingly clever
man, descended from the Chief of the Clan, which was one of
the Seven Septs of Leix, massacred at Mullaghmast, he was in
poor health from his birth. In 1849 he organized a revolutionary
group to which he seems to have given no name. Its member-
ship was composed entirely of men who had belonged to the
Confederate Clubs in Dublin in 1848, and he projected an attack
on Dublin Castle during Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland in 1849.
That attempt is not recorded, so far as I know, in print. Lalor's
organization lasted after his death in 1853, and was merged with
the Irish Republican Brotherhood by James Stephens in 1858.
In America, the refugees of 1848 formed an organization called
the Irish Emigrant Aid Society, with headquarters in New York.
It was in existence when John Mitchel arrived in this country
after his rescue by P. J. Smyth in Tasmania, and in a continua-
tion of his "Jail Journal" in the United Irishman he describes an
interview he had with the Russian Minister to Washington, with
a view to securing Russian aid for Ireland, as the Crimean War
was then going on. As the Russians could give no aid, the organi-
zation fell away, but a meeting of a few of its members was held
in 1855 in the law office of Michael Doheny in Centre Street, at
which were present several of the men who subsequently became
leaders in the Fenian Movement in America. Among them, be-
sides Doheny, were: John O'Mahony, and James Roche who re-
turned to Ireland and started a Nationalist paper in Galway
which did not last long. Roche came back to New York, and died
before the Fenian Movement attained much strength. Others
present were: Thomas J. Kelly, who was afterwards rescued in
Manchester, in 1867; Oliver Byrne, a man having a good theoreti-
17
13
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
cal knowledge of military affairs; Patrick O'Rourke, foreman of
the Tribune pressroom, afterwards Treasurer of the Fenian
Brotherhood in the United States; and General Michael Corcoran,
then a Captain in the 69th Regiment.
The Know-Nothing Movement was at that time in full blast,
and Joseph Denieffe, disgusted by its activities, decided to return
to Ireland. He was a Kilkenny man who knew all about Stephens
(then eking out a poor living by teaching English in Paris) , and
was a cutter in a Broadway tailor shop. Hearing of his inten-
tion, the meeting at Doheny's office was hurriedly called, and it
was decided to ask Denieffe to introduce the Movement into
Ireland. This was in 1856.
Denieffe's little book describes his experiences very accurately,
but does not give the whole story. I knew Denieffe in Dublin,
lived near him in Chicago in the '80's, and met him frequently
at the house of Edward F. Dunne (son of the old Fenian leader,
P. W. Dunne) , later Governor of Illinois, and heard from him his
full story. One evening after returning to my home I wrote
down from memory all he had told me, submitted it to him a few
days later, and he made many changes and corrections. I re-
wrote the statement, and it set forth much more about his early
experiences in Ireland than is contained in his book. Although
he wrote well, he was not accustomed to writing, and forgot many
rather important things which he had told me.
When John O'Leary started to write his Recollections, he
asked me to send him the manuscript, which I did, but O'Leary,
although a brilliant man, was very negligent, and he neither used
the manuscript nor returned it to me. So, the records of many
of the interesting details of the early Fenian Movement in Ire-
land thus disappeared.
When Denieffe arrived in Ireland, he got into touch with some
of the veterans of 1848, among them Dr. Cane of Kilkenny, and
started to organize. As he had no funds he could only admin-
ister the pledge to the few men whom he was able to reach. They
included some Protestants in Armagh and Belfast, where he
worked for a time.
The progress made was so slow that the men he had taken in
were losing confidence. They were holding a meeting one day
at the house of Peter Langan, who kept a lath factory on Lom-
bard Street, Dublin, and were on the point of deciding to dis-
band as Denieffe had not heard from America since he left there.
James Stephens, who, while in France, had heard from friends
in Kilkenny of Denieffe's efforts at reorganization, had just re-
turned to Ireland and got to Langan's place before those as-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
19
sembled there had reached a final decision. Penniless at the
time, Stephens was the most hopeful man among them, and he
insisted that they should hold together until they could send
Denieffe back to America to procure financial aid. Denieffe
returned to New York and found that no meeting had been held
since the one he attended in Doheny's office. The men were
called together again, and the necessity of immediate financial
aid to the men in Ireland was explained to them. Captain
Corcoran, who always was an essentially practical man, pro-
posed that everyone present empty his pockets on the table, and
the amount thus realized was, I think, £80, which was given to
Denieffe, who promptly forwarded it to Ireland. This first instal-
ment was soon followed by other contributions, none of them
large, and Denieffe returned to Ireland to continue his work.
While Denieffe was in America looking for funds for the or-
ganization, Stephens endeavored to make a living by giving
tuitions in French. He had lived ten years in Paris, spoke the lan-
guage perfectly, and had a thorough knowledge of French litera-
ture. He began by calling on John Blake Dillon, whom, of course,
he had known in 1848, and Mr. Dillon at once engaged him to
teach French to his two sons, John and William, and recommended
him to other well-to-do families. Among these was that of Judge
Fitzgerald, who later, when he learned that the tutor of his chil-
dren was the "Head Centre" of the terrible Fenians, became
very indignant and reproached Mr. Dillon for recommending him.
That was the way of the Irish Loyalists at the time. A man
opposed to English rule was ostracized by them, he was deprived
of his means of living and "the bread taken out of his mouth."
Toleration of difference of opinion was unknown to that class,
and in that respect they were worse than the English. After en-
during centuries of persecution, massacre, artificial famine and
shutting out of the light of learning, it is almost a miracle that
the Irish Race survived with spirit enough to continue the
struggle for Freedom. By driving into exile the best brains of the
Race, generation after generation, England undoubtedly dwarfed
its intellect and impeded the evolution of competent leadership.
But, like "an army in being", the Race has continued to live
and proved the truth of Thierry's analysis of its wonderful powers
of recuperation. Its survival as a separate entity proves its right
to existence and insures it eventually a place among the Nations
of the earth. As John Banim sang:
"Thou art not conquered yet, dear land;
Thou art not conquered yet."
On St. Patrick's Day, 1858, Stephens blocked out the form
and character of the organization (which was called the Irish
20
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Republican Brotherhood), wrote down the oath, which every
member afterwards took, and started on a tour of the country,
so far as the limited resources at his command would justify,
accompanied by Denieffe. He was later joined by Thomas Clarke
Luby, who had returned from Australia. Before long they found
a little organization called the Phoenix Society in Skibbereen,
County Cork, which had among its members O'Donovan Rossa,
Mortimer Moynahan, Dan McCartie, the Downing brothers, and
others who later figured in the first attempt by the British Gov-
ernment to crush the Movement. It was very much of a de-
bating and social society, and had done nothing in the way of
procuring arms. The prosecutions were started owing to infor-
mation sent to Dublin Castle by Father O'Sullivan of Kenmare,
County Kerry. One of the newly sworn-in members of the new
Organization, O'Sullivan (Agreem) , had at confession told about
his membership, and Father O'Sullivan asked him to meet him in
his parlor and repeat to him the information he had given him
in the confessional. O'Sullivan did so, and Father O'Sullivan im-
mediately sent it to the Castle. Then another Sullivan, known
ever since by the nickname of "Sullivan Goulah", turned in-
former. A number of arrests were made in Skibbereen. Some of
the men were allowed out on bail; Rossa and others were de-
tained in jail awaiting trial. They were tried before a packed
jury, but the case against them was weak, and, the Government
of the day not believing that the Movement was likely to become
formidable, agreed to release the prisoners on condition that they
would plead guilty. This course was finally adopted by the men,
and they were set free after spending eight months in jail.
This trial, instead of frightening the young men of Ireland,
really advertised the Movement, and helped in its recruiting
later on. Especially in Munster and Leinster, they had been
reading the literature of the Young Irelanders, and were fast be-
coming ripe for the Fenian recruiting agent.
The first impetus given to Fenianism was by the National
Petition Movement, started in the Nation office about 1859. Lord
Palmerston, Lord John Russell and the London Times, intend-
ing their utterances only to apply to the Pope and the King of
Naples, had been advocating the right of every people to choose
their own rulers, and to change them when they thought proper.
They never dreamed of applying this theory to Ireland; but J. P.
Leonard, a Professor of English at the Sorbonne in Paris, who
was the correspondent of the Nation, in one of his letters sug-
gested that Ireland "take England at her word", and start a
movement to demand a plebiscite in Ireland. T. D. Sullivan, of
the Nation, walked into an Irish class (at which I was present)
JOSEPH DENIEFFE
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
21
and to which his brother, A. M. Sullivan, had given the use of
his editorial room, with two or three friends, with a set of reso-
lutions already written. The class was composed mainly of
youths from seventeen up, and Mr. Sullivan asked each of the
boys to father one of the resolutions, which they did. One of
these resolutions called for a public meeting at the European
Hotel in Bolton Street, which was attended by an unexpectedly
large number of veterans of 1848, and young men who had grown
up in the meantime. The National Petition Movement was
started there, and the Committee met in a little room in Jervis
Street. It elected a Chairman for every meeting, but T. D. Sul-
livan was made Permanent Secretary.
This organization became the real foundation of Fenianism in
Dublin. Parish branches were formed to procure signatures to
a petition to Parliament at the church doors on Sundays, and
they achieved a remarkable degree of success. The only real op-
position at any church came from Father Spratt of the Car-
melites in Clarendon Street, who forbade the men to stand at the
church doors or in the chapel yard seeking signatures. But the
young men were not daunted; they procured loans of tables from
citizens, planted them outside the doors of houses in the neigh-
borhood of the church, and secured as many signatures as if they
had been allowed to take them at the church doors.
Several of these parish committees became permanent organi-
zations, some of them taking the form of athletic clubs, and
nearly all the members were later sworn into the Fenian Move-
ment.
Over five hundred thousand signatures were procured to the
Petition throughout the country. The O'Donoghue presented it
in Parliament, in a rather good speech. He was a grand-nephew
of Daniel O'Connell and was at that time looked up to as a
future leader. He had presided at the first public dinner held in
Dublin since 1848, in the Rotunda, on St. Patrick's Day, 1861,
and made a speech in which he said that "the English Parlia-
ment was no place for an Irish gentleman."
I attended that dinner on the eve of my departure to get a
training in the French Army, and I remember the great ovation
which greeted "The Chieftain of the Glens" when he made that
statement.
CHAPTER III.
BURIAL OF TERENCE BELLEW McMANUS.
Funeral in 1861 of Escaped Veteran of 1848 Gave a Strong
Impetus to Fenianism — The Demonstration a Significant
Popular Outpouring.
The organization was well on its way to success in the Sum-
mer of 1861 when Terence Bellew McManus died in California,
and the Nationalists there decided to send his body to Ireland for
burial in Dublin.
He was a Monaghan man, and was in business in Liverpool
when the Young Irelanders seceded from the Repeal Association
and started on their propaganda. The Clubs of the Irish Con-
federation (which was the name of their organization) held
meetings in Dublin, at which insurrection was openly advocated
and many of the members bought rifles and practised target
shooting, but the leaders did nothing but make speeches. Wil-
liam Smith O'Brien (a descendant of Brian Boru) was the leader,
but, though a fairly good Parliamentary speaker, he was not a
popular orator. Charles Gavan Duffy was a pretty good speaker,
but wrote better. John Mitchel spoke well, and his articles in
the United Irishman were revolutionary propaganda of the high-
est order. Thomas Francis Meagher was the star orator of the
Young Irelanders; he prepared his speeches carefully, com-
mitted them to memory and delivered them with fine elocution-
ary effect. Thousands thronged to the Music Hall in Lower
Abbey Street when the meetings were held, to hear him, and he
made many converts among the younger members of the Repeal
Association, which had no good speaker in Conciliation Hall after
Daniel O'Connell had left for Italy, broken in health.
McManus was not an orator, but he was a clear-headed, prac-
tical man. He came over from Liverpool to take part in Smith
O'Brien's projected insurrection in Tipperary and after its failure
was convicted and transported to Van Dieman's Land, where all
the Young Ireland leaders were confined. He was the first of
them to escape, in 1853, and got to California, where he settled
down and subsequently died. There was not much of an organi-
zation in San Francisco at the time, but a meeting of Irish citi-
zens appointed a committee to escort his remains to Ireland and
secure burial in Glasnevin. There were demonstrations in every
city along the route to New York. The body was held in New
York for a few days before shipment to Ireland and honored by
the Irish people here, the Fenian Brotherhood taking charge.
22
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
23
There was no Atlantic cable in those days and the news of the
death of McManus only reached Ireland a few days before the
arrival of the body, so there was little time for preparation. But
the time was well utilized. Stephens and Denieffe were the only
Fenian leaders then in Dublin, and the general Irish public knew
little or nothing about them. There were a few veterans of
1848, and some new men like the Sullivans of the Nation who
thought it was their prerogative to take charge of all Nationalist
demonstrations, so when a committee was formed, there was a
contest for control of it.
The body of McManus was received in Cork by a hastily organ-
ized committee and large crowds attended the funeral proces-
sion there. At every station where the train bearing the remains
stopped, there were great crowds which stood silently with bared
heads until the train left, but there was no organization. The
word had reached the people that the body of the Rebel of 1848
was on the train and they turned out spontaneously to honor it.
In Dublin, the two elements on the committee were unanimous
in seeking to have a mass said at the Cathedral in Marlborough
Street and to have the body lie in state in it, but Archbishop
Cullen positively refused. The committee then decided to hold
the wake in the Mechanics' Institute on Lower Abbey Street, a
few blocks away from the Cathedral. Instead of throwing a
damper on the demonstration of respect for the dead, the Arch-
bishop's action only intensified popular feeling and vast crowds
stood for many blocks in the contiguous streets waiting for their
turn to view the remains. Among them were many priests, in-
cluding the famous Father Kenyon of Templederry, County Tip-
perary, and Father Meehan of Dublin, both friends of John
Mitchel.
There were rather warm debates at the committee meetings
over the arrangements for the funeral, and the selection of the
speakers, but the Fenians won complete control. Father Kenyon,
who was a fine speaker, but spoke with a strong brogue, knew
nothing of the Fenians, but he was as strong a Nationalist as
any of them. The sister of McManus had written to him, asking
him to take charge of the funeral, as she knew no more of the
new movement than he.
He was satisfied with the explanations given and the funeral
went off according to program. John O'Clohessy, who had re-
cently returned from India, where he served in the Bombay Horse
Artillery, was selected as Marshal of the procession. He was a
handsome man with a fine figure, and he had a talent for man-
aging processions. He had handled the crowds which greeted
the Irish Papal Brigade at the Kingsbridge station on their re-
24
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
turn from Italy a few months previously, and speedily brought
order out of chaos, so the men of Dublin knew his capacity for
such things. He had joined the organization very early, was
one of the Dublin "Centres", and was later sentenced to a term
of imprisonment. His brother Michael (later well known in New
York) was also an active member and had a hand in the arrange-
ments for the funeral. They were sons of a Dublin policeman
from Clare.
The arrangements for the funeral were perfect and were car-
ried out with precision. It was much bigger than the funeral
of O'Connell. Dublin had never seen anything like it before.
All the trade societies took part in it and it seemed as if every
man in Dublin was in line, or on the streets as an onlooker. The
trains that morning brought great crowds from all parts of the
country, practically all of whom fell into line. O'Clohessy selected
a number of ex-British soldiers and Papal Brigade men as his
assistants and gave them instructions the night before. The
handling of the procession, which was several miles long, was
faultless, and the demeanor of the vast crowd which lined the
sidewalks along the route was most respectful. All heads were
bared as the cortege passed, and women prayed aloud.
As the procession passed the spot in Thomas Street where
Robert Emmet was hanged in 1803, and the house on the same
street where Lord Edward Fitzgerald was stabbed to death with
a cane sword by Capt. Ryan in 1798, each contingent stood for
a moment and the men took off their hats. At every historic
spot on the way to Glasnevin, there were appropriate demonstra-
tions. The men in line were of fine physique and their splendid
bearing greatly impressed the English newspapermen. The lat-
ter thought they had all been drilled, but Irishmen are born
soldiers and fall into military step naturally.
In the cemetery a dense mass of people stood near the grave
and speeches were made by Jeremiah Cavanagh and Captain
Smith of San Francisco, which were heartily cheered. After the
funeral services the immense crowd disbanded in an orderly
manner.
Several thousand country people remained for a few days
after the funeral to see the city and hundreds of them were
sworn into the organization by friends and relatives resident in
the Capital, and they started it going in their home districts
after their return.
The funeral was a test, not of the strength of Fenianism,
but of the revival of the fighting National spirit, which had been
thought dead after the great Famine of 1847 and the failure of
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
25
the Young Ireland Movement in 1848. Dublin itself was sur-
prised at the magnificent demonstration, and the countrymen
returned to their homes inspired with new hope.
The English Government was also surprised and greatly dis-
appointed and the London press voiced its feelings. The Ireland
they thought incapable of giving them further trouble of a
serious nature, they now realized was filled with the old militant
National Spirit. The population was still over 6,000,000, which
was 2,000,000 less than in 1847 when emigration began on a large
scale after havoc had been wrought by hunger and typhus, but
the people were still numerous enough to give the Alien Govern-
ment food for thought. But that only awakened their fears. It
did not make them dream of conciliation, and their minds were
occupied only with plans for further repression. A habit that
had lasted for nearly seven centuries was hard to change, and
it required much more than processions marching through the
streets of Dublin to bring about the alteration. The determina-
tion to keep Ireland suppressed, in population and in industry,
remained as strong as ever. Every concession had to be wrung
from England and all of them were halting, incomplete and eva-
sive, including the last one in 1921.
The significance of the popular outpouring in Dublin on
November 10, 1861, lay in the fact that McManus was wholly
unkown in Ireland before his conviction in 1848. All the great
body of the people knew was that he had suffered imprisonment
for Ireland and had escaped from prison in Tasmania.
The effect of the McManus funeral demonstration in the
country was very marked. It gave a strong impetus to the Fenian
Movement and made recruiting easy. The contest with the
"Moderates" for control of the demonstration, resulting, as it
did, in complete success, inspired the young men with great con-
fidence, but it also had some bad effect. It developed a spirit
of intolerance which prevented union with the "Moderates" on
reasonable terms and turned their sympathy away. This pro-
duced evil results in later years, but for the moment it made
Fenianism strong and aggressive.
I missed the McManus funeral, much to my regret (as I was
then serving in the French Foreign Legion) , and could only read
the reports of it in a tent in Algeria. But when I returned to
Dublin in 1862 and heard the inside story from the men who had
taken part in it, I was amazed at the extraordinary change which
had taken place in the spirit of the country. It marked a turning
point in the history of the movement, and Fenianism made rapid
progress thereafter.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MOVEMENT SPREADS.
Steady Progress in the Early 'Sixties — How the Organization
Permeated the Provinces — Total Membership 80,000.
After the National Petition had been dumped on the floor
of the English House of Commons, the Fenian Movement made
rapid progress in Dublin, and from Dublin spread steadily to
the provincial towns in Leinster. The chief recruiting grounds
in the Capital were the trade unions and the three big drapery
establishments, Cannock, White & Co.; Todd, Burns & Co., and
McSwiney, Delany & Co. In these establishments the Drapers'
Assistants were all country boys and were a fine set of fellows.
They were boarded and lodged in the houses where they worked
and were obliged to dress well in order to keep their jobs. They
were also well-mannered and very intelligent. Several of them,
chiefly from Cork, were already members before they left home
and were great recruiters.
The man who swore me in, James Joseph O'Connell O'Cal-
laghan, of Kanturk, was, next to O'Donovan Rossa and Edward
Duffy, the best recruiter in Ireland, but he had a great talent for
exaggeration. At the National Petition meetings, while he was
feeling me out (a wholly unnecessary proceeding, for I already
belonged to a gun club) he told me there were already 20,000
members in Cork and 15,000 in Tipperary, evidently multiplying
the actual number by 5. The swearing in was done in Alexan-
der M. Sullivan's editorial room in the Nation office, where a
Gaelic class met. O'Callaghan did not learn any Irish and only
joined the class to pick out recruits. I introduced him to many
others and he swore in most of the men who later became Cen-
tres in Dublin. His own Circle, after many had been promoted
and had started Circles of their own, numbered 1,100 men.
O'Callaghan also swore in James J. O'Kelly, who later organ-
ized London, and Matthew O'Neill, whose Circle, mostly men of
the building trades and of fine physique, was 1,200 strong. The
biggest Circle in Dublin was that of Hugh Brophy, a builder,
who was arrested with Stephens and lived for many years in
Sydney, Australia, after his release from prison in 1869 and died
there. His men were also mainly from the building trades. Next
to the building trades, shoemakers and tailors were the most
numerous artisans in the organization.
26
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
27
From Dublin, chiefly through the Drapers' Assistants, the or-
ganization spread to the Leinster and Connacht towns. The
organization was always begun at the top. One man was sworn
in and empowered to obligate others, and if he was successful
in recruiting, was in time made a Centre by Stephens. No wit-
ness of the taking of the oath was ever present. Only the man
who administered the oath and the man who took it could give
definite information of the act, and no member was supposed
to know any other man in the Circle outside his own seclon,
numbering not more than ten. The first rule, as to swearing in,
was always strictly adhered to, but the other was utterly dis-
regarded. Every man knew all the members of his own Circle
and practically those of every other Circle in the town. And
the organization would not have grown so rapidly were it not for
that fact. Touching elbows with fellow-members at public dem-
onstrations and having "a pint" with others was a great factor.
The Centre, or head of the Circle (who was supposed to have
the rank of Colonel) was known as "A", and he was allowed
to have nine "Bs", or sub-Centres (Captains) ; each "B" had
nine "Cs" (Sergeants) if his quota was full, and every "C" had
nine "Ds", who were privates. This regulation was never strictly
adhered to and some Circles, like that of John Hickey of "Kings-
town", and William F. Roantree's in the Leixlip District of Kil-
dare, had fully 2,000 members. A little Tipperary hunchback
shoemaker named Stephen Tracy, who was one of O'Callaghan's
"Bs" in Dublin, had the ambition to become a Centre, recruited
his section up to 150 men and appointed three or four "Nomee-
nial 'Bs' ", saying he "didn't want to play second fiddle to no
man", and there were other instances of the kind.
The Highland Scotch bookkeeper in the old New York Herald
office (a Catholic MacDonald) , found the oath in the same way
in an Aberdeen paper and swore in thirty other Catholic High-
land Gaels, who were all ready to go to Ireland to fight, but the
first news they got of the Rising was the report of the failure
of March 5, 1867. MacDonald's brother, a priest, was president
of the College of Valladolid in Spain. But these were only ex-
ceptions: in all cases the starting of the organization was done
by duly authorized men.
There were in all fifteen Circles in Dublin — Hugh Brophy's,
Matthew O'Neill's, James O'Callaghan's, James Cook's, Garrett
O'Shaughnessy's, Denis Cromien's, Michael Moore's, Patrick
Kearney's, John Kirwan's, John O'Clohessy's, Niall Breslin's,
James O'Connor's, Nicholas Walsh's and Edmund O'Donovan's,
and John Hickey's in Dunleary (Kingstown) .
28
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
O'Donovan's was composed almost entirely of Protestants.
O'Donovan Rossa, in his frequent visits to the home of John
O'Donovan, the great scholar, in Buckingham Street, swore in
three sons of the latter, including Edmund, who was the eldest.
The number of members in Dublin was reported as over
10,000, and it was certainly above 8,000. There were, besides,
small Circles in North and South Dublin County. In the Glen-
cullen district, I found there were several hundred unreported
men; their leaders being Larry Caulin and Larry Ellis.
Carlow came in very early. The Centre there was a man
named Londrigan, who was brought in by Andrew Nolan, a Car-
low man who was a clerk in a hardware shop in Thomas Street,
Dublin. John Nolan, a brother of Andy, brought the organiza-
tion to Belfast, where he had a good position in a drapery estab-
lishment. From Belfast he spread it through Ulster.
But though Londrigan was the most prominent man in the
organization in Carlow, the best known and most popular was a
farmer named John Morris. He was an eccentric man, but in
his way very clever and resourceful. After the Irish People was
seized he was "wanted" by the police, but managed to evade ar-
rest without going more than four or five miles away from his
home by training the boys of the neighborhood to signal him
by blowing horns to warn him of the approach of the Peelers.
Often they put a cordon around the district, but he always man-
aged to slip through. At the meeting of Centres that decided
on the Rising of March 5, 1867, he thought the American offi-
cers were interfering too much — though it was the one occasion
when their counsel was most needed — and he said, as Niall Breslin
later told me: "I'd have ye gintlemin from America understand
that ye're only ogzeeliaries here." After the Rising he escaped
to America and settled in Chicago. Although he took sides against
the "Triangle", he liked "sthrong talkers" and went to all public
meetings where John F. Finerty was a speaker. He would ap-
plaud him vigorously and shout: "Good boy, John; give it to
them" when the orator was "twisting the lion's tail" most vigor-
ously. He gave his children a good education and one of his
sons became a priest. (The term "Triangle" was applied to that
section of the Clan-na-Gael of which Sullivan, Boland and Feely
were the leaders.)
Hugh Byrne of Tinahely, a school teacher and a highly gifted
man, started the movement in Wicklow, in which it became very
strong. He wrote a book on arithmetic in Mount joy Prison. He
died in San Francisco in the early 'eighties.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
29
The organization was begun in Louth by a Drogheda man
named McCabe, and one of his first coadjutors was Harry Byrne
who later introduced me to John Boyle O'Reilly.
William Francis Roantree of Leixlip brought it into North
Kildare, and a tailor named Byrne, then working in Dublin,
to Athy. A Dublin "chimney sweep" named Sullivan, who had
settled in Newbridge, started it there, and when I met him after
moving to Naas in 1862, he had over two hundred men. He had
a fine voice and knew how to use it. He was strong on "Corae-
all-ye's" and his favorite was:
"My love Nell
Was an Irish girl
From the Cove of Cork came she:
I'm a-weeping and a-wailing
And the big ship sailing
For the shores of Americay."
After a lapse of over sixty years his splendid voice is still
ringing in my ears. Sweeping chimneys was looked upon as a
low occupation, but Sullivan made a good living and was a very
intelligent man. His work was done chiefly by boys. He was too
big to go up a chimney himself.
I brought the organization to Naas, and my district included
Ballymore Eustace, Kilcullen, Athgarvan, Kill (my native par-
ish) , Straffan and the Bog of Allen.
In Queens County the organization was started by Matthew
Carroll of Maryborough, then a shoemaker, who was sworn in
while working in Dublin. He brought in a well-to-do shopkeeper
named McCabe in Portarlington, and Bill Dunphy, Matt Fleming
and his younger brother, George (both well known later in
Chicago), and Edward Murphy, son of a wealthy mill-owner, in
Mountmellick.
Carroll had a brother a minister, but I knew Matt more than
twenty-five years before I learned he was a Protestant. His men
and mine used to meet in Monasterevan on occasional Sundays,
walking all the way and lunching on bread and butter, washed
down with a pint of porter. On other Sundays we walked from
Naas to Dublin, Carroll walking the whole twenty-five miles
from Maryborough on Saturday. As we passed the church in Kill,
I used to say to him: "Well, as we're passing the chapel we
might as well go to Mass." Carroll would answer: "All right",
and we'd go to a seat in the gallery belonging to cousins of mine,
where he would take a little Catholic prayer book from his vest
pocket and read the prayers for Mass. All Fenians carried that
little prayer book for swearing-in purposes, and later when a
man was arrested the papers would say: "Among the suspicious
30
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
articles found on the prisoner were * * * and a small prayer
book."
Matt Carroll in 1867 was one of the founders of the Clan-na-
Gael and became very well known in New York, where he was
employed as a clothing cutter, and in Jersey City, where he died.
The organization was started in Meath soon after Denieffe's
arrival by a veteran of 1848 named Philip Grey, whom Luby,
O'Leary and Denieffe united in describing as a man of high char-
acter, but he died a year or two later and his death retarded the
work.
Meath was not strong in Fenianism. Its chief men were James
Pallas, the school teacher in Athboy, and Tom Masterson of
Navan, a shoemaker, who moved into Dublin. Billy McLaughlin,
still alive at this writing (August, 1927) in New York, was then
a mere boy, but was a member.
Tom Williams (Secretary to Charles A. Dana of the New York
Sun) started the organization in Longford. He was a Dublin man
whose father owned the old Evening Post, and he became Editor
of the Longford Register, which enabled him to introduce the
organization into that County. When he died, in New York, he
was an editorial contributor to the Gaelic American.
Tom Owens, a quiet, unassuming little Dublin waiter, got a
job in Jude's restaurant at the Mullingar railway station and
started the work in Westmeath. He did not make much progress
until Captain Joe Carroll was assigned to the command of that
County.
I go into all these details because they were typical of the
Fenian Movement, and of the men who composed it all over Ire-
land, so that the new generation may have a clearer view of the
Ireland of that day. I knew nothing of the organization in the
Kings County and little of Wexford.
Kilkenny was one of our strongholds, but Callan had a much
larger number of men than the city. John Haltigan, foreman
printer of the Kilkenny Journal (father of Patrick Haltigan, the
Reading Clerk of the House of Representatives, and of the late
James Haltigan, editor of the Celtic Monthly and later chair-
man of the chapel in the composing room of the New York
World) , was head of the movement in the City of Kilkenny, but
Stephens brought him to Dublin and made him foreman of the
Irish People office. In Callan the chief man was Edward Coyne,
whose brother, Philip, was an active worker in New York.
In Cork City the chief whom all looked up to was John
Kenealy, who was convicted and sentenced to ten years' penal
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
31
servitude in January, 1866. He was released from Western Aus-
tralia in 1869, went to San Francisco, where he lived for many
years, moved to Los Angeles before it became famous, except as
a health resort, and died there many years ago. Although the
system of County Centres did not exist in the old organization,
John Kenealy practically exercised all the functions of that
office for Cork County. He was an even tempered man with a
judicial mind and fine judgment, and was highly respected by
everybody.
Skibbereen was a hotbed of Fenianism and gave us not only
O'Donovan Rossa (whom Padraic Pearse justly described as the
most typical Fenian) but Mortimer Moynahan and his brother,
Michael, who later on was Secretary to General Canby during
the Modoc War in the Lava Beds, the three Downing brothers,
P. J., Denis and Daniel. P. J., after serving with distinction in
Meagher's Brigade, became Lieutenant-Colonel of the Ninety-
ninth New York National Guard (of which John O'Mahony was
Colonel) , later settled in Washington, and died there. He was
the father of Rossa Downing, well known in the early days of
the Friends of Irish Freedom.
There were more prisoners from Skibbereen in Mount joy
Prison in 1866 than from any other town in Ireland. They were
mostly Gaelic speakers and spoke English with a very strong
brogue. "Have oo any noos from Shkib?" one asked another
in my hearing one day as we walked round the exercise ring,
and the other replied: "No; but I do be dhraming — wisha, quare
dhrames." Owing to the close confinement, prisoners often had
distorted dreams.
Next to John Kenealy in Cork City was James F. X. O'Brien,
a man of considerable literary ability. John Lynch was another
very active member in the early days. He was convicted early in
1866 and died in Pentonville Prison. Another energetic worker
was John O'Callaghan, who spent several months in Mount-
joy Prison as a suspect in 1866, but was not convicted.
Bantry, Mallow, Fermoy, Midleton and Kanturk were good
Fenian towns, but Fermoy came next to Skibbereen in strength.
East Cork was poorer in spirit than West Cork, and the people
seemed to belong to a different branch of the Race.
In Tipperary, Charles J. Kickham was not only the leader,
but was one of the chief men of the whole movement. I deal
with him in a separate chapter.
Denis Dowling Mulcahy, who practised medicine in Newark,
N. J., for many years, was one of the leaders in Tipperary, but
Stephens took both Kickham and him to Dublin as members of
32
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
the staff of the Irish People and both were arrested and con-
victed.
Clare was one of the best Fenian counties in Ireland — due to
the initiative of Edmund O'Donovan, and John Clune, whom he
swore in. Clune was arrested early in 1866, but was released on
bail because he made himself sick by eating soap in Mount joy
Prison, so that he might not have to go to America — as most of
the prisoners were then compelled to do, if they were to secure
their freedom. It nearly killed him, as there was arsenic in the
soap.
In Waterford City the chief man was Denis Cashman (con-
victed in February, 1867 with me) , and he was ably assisted by a
man named Dillon and by a wealthy pig dealer named Kenny.
The county was not well organized. Cashman was for a time
Business Manager of the Boston Pilot.
Kerry was at that time poor ground, and the Corkmen con-
temptuously called the Kerrymen "Chieftain Members", on ac-
count of their devotion to The O'Donoghue, even after he took
an English job. The chief man there was William Moore Stack
(father of Austin) , who was also convicted with me. He was
then an attorney's clerk in Dublin. Maurice Moynahan became
County Centre after the reorganization in 1867, and a man named
Moriarty was also an active worker. When Colonel O'Connor
returned from America after the Civil War he became the
leader and headed the premature insurrection in Kerry in Feb-
ruary, 1867.
In Limerick, Jack Daly and his brother Ned were mere boys
in 1867, but they took part in the Rising. It was in the reor-
ganized movement that John became prominent. The leader in
the city was David Murphy, who was shot at later by a deluded
young fellow named O'Kelly, — at the instigation of Richard Pigott,
whose thefts from the funds subscribed through the Irishman
he had threatened to expose. He was at the time bookkeeper in
the Irishman office. He was alive, though well over ninety, when
I last heard from him. There was also Edward Murphy (not a
relative of David) , a shoemaker in Limerick and a very active
worker, whom I only met in New York. Except for Kilmallock
the rest of the County was poorly organized.
I knew little of Connacht except what I heard from Ned
Duffy and O'Donovan Rossa, who made a tour of the province
together. Rossa's proficiency in Irish helped him considerably,
but Duffy, although born in Connacht, knew nothing of the lan-
guage. I learned much about conditions in Mayo years later
from Martin Lovern, a lame schoolmaster, descended from one
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
33
of Humbert's soldiers who did not return to France. He was
also a school teacher in Scranton and died in Buffalo, N. Y. He
had a fine copy of the "Annals of the Four Masters" and fre-
quently sent me postal cards in Irish.
The organization was strongest in Mayo and Roscommon, but
Galway, Sligo and Leitrim were poorly organized. In the reor-
ganized movement Mayo was the best in Ireland, but Cavan was
a strong rival.
I had little knowledge of Ulster outside of Belfast, where
there was a fine organization, and many groups of the members
often visited Dublin. The most prominent of these was Frank
Rooney, a splendid fellow. Another frequent visitor was a man
named Loughrey. There was a good organization in Down. In
Newtownards, when Rossa visited the town in 1864 or 1865, he
found the Centre to be a Presbyterian linen manufacturer, and
the membership about evenly divided between Catholics, Presby-
terians and Episcopalians. The tradition of the United Irishmen
was still alive there. During my time the Episcopalians were
always called "Protestants", while each of the other Protestant
sects was given its respective designation, and I believe the cus-
tom still prevails.
The I. R. B. was also strong in Monaghan under James Blaney
Rice of Tyholland with whom I was not then acquainted.
The organization got into several places without Stephens
knowing anything about it, owing to failure to report it. I dis-
covered some cases accidentally. There was a Dunlavin family
named Leonard in Naas, one of whose members, Patrick, although
hardly twenty, was one of my most active workers. He joined
the United States Army later, became a staff sergeant, and died
at the Presidio Barracks in San Francisco the day before the
great earthquake and fire. I went with him in 1864 to the
funeral of a relative at Stratford, County Wicklow, close to Dun-
lavin. There was a mill there at that time which employed a
large number of men. I was introduced to more than a score of
them who all belonged to the organization, and was assured
there were fully 1,500 in the district. When I told this to
Stephens on my next visit to Dublin I found he had never heard
of it. I have no doubt there were other such cases which would
more than make up for possible exaggerations elsewhere.
Stephens claimed a total membership in Ireland, England,
Scotland and Wales of 80,000, exclusive of the 15,000 men in the
British army, and he was probably right.
One of the recruiting grounds for Fenianism in its early days
in Dublin and in the North of England was the Brotherhood of
34
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
St. Patrick. It was an open, unsworn organization which held
its meetings in a hall over a restaurant in Marlborough Street,
near the river, which was run by a white American woman whose
husband was a mulatto and the only waiter was their son, a very
meek boy. It was a good restaurant, though cheap, and was well
patronized. One could get a good, plain dinner of meat and
vegetables for sixpence. While the mulatto, a big, stalwart
fellow, stalked around the dining room, his Yankee wife stood
at the cash desk talking incessantly.
The hall on the second floor (it was a three-story stone build-
ing) seated about a hundred people, and it was well filled at the
weekly meetings. No resolutions were passed and the proceed-
ings consisted entirely of speech making. The chief speakers
were Thomas Neilson Underwood (an Ulster Presbyterian who
was a nephew of Samuel Neilson, the United Irishman, and a
cousin of Charles Underwood O'Connell) ; Charles G. Doran, the
architect who later designed the Cathedral at Cobh (Queens-
town), and John C. Hoey, author of "That Damned Green Flag
Again". Both Underwood and Doran were good speakers, but did
not speak to any particular text. Their topic was Irish Nation-
ality, but they advocated no particular programme or policy.
Hoey, who said "dis" and "dat", was an admirer of Hofer, the
Tyrolese patriot, and referred to him in every speech, in advocacy
of physical force. He constantly repeated the invocation used by
Hofer when his men were hurling rocks down from the mountains
on the Bavarians. Not one of the three was a member of the
I. R. B. at that time, but after the failure of 1867 Doran joined
it and some years later became Secretary of the Supreme Council.
Hoey's poem referred to above was based on the story of how
a Confederate officer remarked on the repeated charges of
Meagher's Irish Brigade in one of the famous battles of the
American Civil War: "There's that damned green flag again".
It was recited everywhere by the Fenians.
The Brotherhood of St. Patrick got a good deal of public
notice through Dean O'Brien of Newcastle West, County Limerick,
head of the Catholic Young Men's Society, denouncing it bitterly
in the newspapers. He made all kinds of unfounded accusations
against it, among which was that the members were being drilled
with wooden guns and that it was a cloak for a secret society.
The attacks were wholly unprovoked and unjustified, but they
were continued for many months.
No man of any consequence undertook to answer Dean
O'Brien, but "Red Jim" McDermott, who later became notorious
as a British spy, wrote some flippant letters in the Irishman
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
35
(then edited by Denis Holland) which were wholly ineffective
and only supplied Father O'Brien with new texts for attack.
Finally Stephens ordered all I. R. B. members to withdraw
from the St. Patrick's Brotherhood, and it dwindled to very small
proportions, but continued to hold meetings for several months.
It had no central governing body. The English branches pub-
lished weekly reports of their meetings in the Irishman. Later,
most of their members were taken into the I. R. B. and their
S. P. B. meetings ceased.
CHAPTER V.
THE FEUD WITH THE SULLIVANS.
A. M. Sullivan, Who Became Editor of The "Nation" After the
"Young Ireland" Period, Antagonistic to the I. R. B. — His
Unjustifiable Attacks Begot Retaliation.
The feud with the Sullivans was very unfortunate and did
much harm, but the Fenians did not begin it. It was started by
the publication in the Nation of a letter from Alexander M.
Sullivan to William Smith O'Brien stating that while on a yacht-
ing tour around the Southern coast he found in Bantry and
other towns that members of a secret society were using Mr.
O'Brien's name to induce others to join, claiming that he was a
member. While it was probably true that some were doing this,
the leaders knew nothing of it and were not responsible. The
publication of the letter was a wholly unwarrantable and unjus-
tifiable act, as it warned the Government that the organization
they thought they had suppressed by the trials of the Skibbereen
and Kenmare men was at work again and put it on the scent.
The men in West Cork retaliated by nicknaming A. M. Sullivan
"Goulah", the opprobrious epithet which they had applied to the
fellow who betrayed O'Sullivan of Kenmare. The nickname
was adopted by the members generally, and the Dublin men at-
tempted to break up all public meetings at which the then editor
of the Nation was announced to speak.
Sullivan repeated his offense in his report in the Nation of a
public meeting in the Rotunda for the purpose of starting a
public National organization a few days after the McManus
Funeral in 1861. The control of the meeting was captured by
the Fenians and they were in a majority on the committee ap-
pointed to begin the work of organization. Mr. Sullivan printed
a list of the committee with a number of names in italics and a
note at the foot of the list saying that the names in italics were
"friends of the Fenian delegates". This was another warning
to the Government and was downright "felon-setting". It made
the men very bitter against Sullivan and they retaliated very
vigorously. The proposed organization was not formed.
At a meeting in the Rotunda on Feb. 22, 1864, to protest
against a Loyalist project of erecting a monument to Prince
Albert in College Green there was a riot in which Mr. Sullivan
was ousted from the platform. Stephens sent a letter to the
36
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
37
Dublin Centres telling them to protest against Sullivan making
a speech, but he did not, as Sullivan claims in one of his books,
order them to use violence. I was present on the platform.
The O'Donoghue presided and in his opening speech referred
to the editor of the Nation as "my esteemed friend Mr. Sullivan".
That started the row. A number of young men, led by Paddy
Kearney and Jack Clohessy (both ex-British soldiers) made a
rush for the platform and stormed it. The whole meeting was
in confusion immediately and the men on the platform, jammed
together as they were, could do nothing but utter vain protests.
Those around me were the class of men who would make good
members, but they were indignant at the disturbance and prob-
ably never joined afterwards. They evidently did not appreciate
the reasons for the antipathy to Sullivan, but were indignant at
the breaking up of a meeting to protest against desecrating
College Green with a statue of the Prince Consort who had writ-
ten a letter to Humboldt in which he said that "the Poles were
deserving of as little sympathy as the Irish". That letter had
been published a short while before, and everybody had read it.
Dr. Waters, who edited a daily paper started by A. M. Sullivan
called the Morning News, and who stuttered badly when excited,
attempted to make a speech from the gallery defending Sullivan
and was jeered by the crowd as they went out. A number of the
I. R. B. men went over to the Irish People office in Parliament
Street, where an impromptu meeting, without a Chairman, was
held and speeches were made by Stephens and Luby. The C. O.
I. R. (Chief Organizer of the Irish Republic) was not a practiced
speaker and only explained that it was a mistake to storm the
platform and break upon the meeting, but Luby was jubilant
and spoke sarcastically of Dr. Waters and his stammering at-
tempt at a speech and "the stampede of the respectables". That
was the way all present felt.
A few days later, another, but very small meeting was held in
the Rotunda, to which admission was by ticket and a heavy
guard placed on the door. The breaking up of the previous meet-
ing was bitterly denounced, and the cleavage started there con-
tinued until the trials in 1865-6.
I thought the effect of the riotous proceedings on the country
would be very bad, but it was less so than I anticipated. Meet-
ing a man on the street in Naas on my return he asked me about
it and I answered him apologetically, but I was surprised when
he said in a tone of admiration: "They must be damn shtrong."
The fight with the Sullivans went on for many years and pre-
vented many good men from joining the organization. It divided
38
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Ireland into two rival camps, but the Fenians were organized
and the followers of Sullivan were not, and that counted for
much. Sullivan ceased denouncing and making exposures, but
in reporting public events in the Nation he and T. D. showed
their animosity unmistakably. When George Clarke was killed
on the bank of the Royal Canal near Phibsborough the Nation
put this heading over the report: "Man Killed on False Sus-
picion." Nobody in the Nation or the Morning News office knew
anything whatever about the case, but the report undertook to
show that Clarke was innocent. The fact was that the evidence
against Clarke was conclusive. Michael Breslin, clerk in the Head
Police Office, saw him there talking to Superintendent Hughes;
a detachment of detectives was immediately sent out and raided
an arms depot in which he had applied for work the day before,
and when refused, grumbled in a threatening way. Clarke was a
chronic grumbler. He and about twenty others sent to Rome by
Father Fay of Meath Street Church to join the Irish Papal
Brigade returned to Ireland without enlisting because they were
dissatisfied about something.
The evidence was first submitted to Colonel Kerwin as Judge
Advocate, who passed upon it. Edmund O'Donovan presided at
the courtmartial. At the termination of the trial Clarke was
found guilty and duly sentenced to death. Sam Cavanagh and
Garret O'Shaughnessy were detailed to put the sentence into
effect, — which they did. I forget the name of the one-armed
Dublin man, whom I often met here in later years, who inveigled
Clarke to the place of execution. Cavanagh and O'Shaughnessy
got safely to America and both died in New York, the latter
within a few years of his arrival and Cavanagh about 1908. Cava-
nagh became a Lieutenant in the Sixty-Ninth and was Presi-
dent of the Veterans of the I. R. B. for some time.
When John O'Leary was sentenced to twenty years' penal
servitude, A. M. Sullivan wrote a very mean article about him.
After commending him for his splendid speech in the dock, the
article said:
"Grave things, terrible things, have been said of John
O'Leary and of his brother Arthur, now deceased, but we
refrain," etc.
It would have been more manly if Sullivan had made definite
charges, but the insinuation was damnable. John O'Leary led a
pure and strictly moral life, and the most terrible thing he had
ever done was to stop going to Mass. He was neither an Atheist
nor a Freethinker, but used to say that he belonged to the Broad
Church. Father Finlay, the Jesuit who was prominent in the
Industrial Movement, succeeded in reconciling him with the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
39
Church and he died within its fold. He had never written a word
against Sullivan and disapproved attacks on him.
It was cowardly to assail a man who could not defend him-
self, for under the English prison system convicted prisoners are
not allowed to see newspapers, and warders are always present
when friends or relatives visit them and are under orders to
prevent the conveyance of information regarding public events.
But, even if O'Leary were free to reply he would treat the attack
with silent scorn. He never engaged in personal controversies.
While the Nation under control of the Sullivans was not up to
the high standard of the paper of the days of Gavan Duffy and
Thomas Davis, it was of high literary merit. No weekly paper
in Europe was equal to the old Nation, except perhaps the Lon-
don Spectator, and it was of a wholly different type. The Spec-
tator dealt only with the events of the day, while the Nation
was devoted to a Cause and appealed to the intellect of a Race
in an effort to lift the Race to a higher level and inspire it with
enthusiasm for the Cause.
But the paper under the management of the Sullivans did
splendid work. It kept the National Cause afloat and fought
English tyranny and Anglo-Irish Landlordism manfully; and
Alexander Sullivan rendered fine service in the Longford and
Tipperary elections, in which the majority of the priests, under
the leadership of their Bishops, took the wrong side. T. D. Sulli-
van's poetry, although some of it was of little merit, exercised a
strong influence on the people and helped to keep the Nationalist
Spirit alive.
The Nation of the Sullivans tried to make good the motto of
the old Nation, "to create and foster public opinion in Ireland and
make it racy of the soil."
Notwithstanding the feud with the I. R. B., Tim Sullivan be-
came a sort of Poet Laureate of the Fenians after the Manchester
Rescue by writing "God Save Ireland", which became the National
Anthem until replaced by "The Soldiers' Song" after Easter
Week, 1916. The art of composing music seemed to have died
out in Ireland and all new songs were written to old, or foreign
airs. T. D. wrote "God Save Ireland" to the air of "Tramp,
Tramp, Tramp", written in Libby Prison by a prisoner of the
Civil War. It has fallen into disuse since the reconciliation with
the South, but the American officers carried it to Ireland and the
Dublin men picked it up. It was a fine marching song:
"Tramp, tramp, tramp! the boys are marching,
Cheer up, comrades, they will come,
And beneath the starry flag
We shall breathe the air again
Of the free land in our own beloved home."
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
God rest the souls of the Sullivans. They loved Ireland in
their own way as dearly as did the Fenians. T. D. in his very in-
teresting book of Recollections says that in 1848, Alexander, then
a very young man, started to join Smith O'Brien in Tipperary,
but on the way he heard of the fiasco at Ballingarry and the
arrest of O'Brien. He was making the journey from Bantry on
foot. T. D. also gives high praise to the sincerity and enthusiasm
of the Skibbereen men. But "Ah, Im", as Tim used to call his
brother, was wholly unjustified in the exposures which provoked
the retaliation of the Fenians.
CHAPTER VI.
THE "IRISH PEOPLE".
Organ of the Movement Did Fine Propaganda Work — The Office
Visited Too Much by the I. R. B. Members — Its Correspon-
dence Columns Among Its Best Features.
The Irish People has been described by many, including
Michael Davitt, as one of Stephens's mistakes, but I entirely
disagree with them. The theory of its critics was that it ex-
posed the organization too much and thereby helped the Gov-
ernment. There is some basis for the criticism, but the services
of the paper to the Cause, in my opinion, far outweighed the
damage it did in this direction. It was established in Novem-
ber, 1863.
A Revolutionary Organization that numbered 80,000 men at
its zenith could not continue to be in the full sense of the term
a secret conspiracy. The people had to be converted to its views
and committed to its objects, and that could not be done by
a whispering campaign. Secrecy at the top was essential, but
the Irish are a loquacious people and Stephens's original rules
could not be carried out, and were not. There must be a public
propaganda and that could only be carried on by a weekly paper
which would reach the general public, as well as the members
of the organization.
John O'Leary, the Editor of the paper, in his Recollections of
Fenians and Fenianism, and Thomas Clarke Luby, an Associate
Editor, whose Memoirs are not in book form (more's the pity) ,
have fully described the Irish People from the literary stand-
point, and O'Leary also gives very interesting details of the finan-
cial difficulties which had to be overcome. A paper of the char-
acter of the Irish People is never a financial success and has to
seek support from other sources than the public. The Irish
People managed to live for nearly two years until the Govern-
ment suppressed it on September 15, 1865.
I shall deal with phases of its existence hardly mentioned by
O'Leary or Luby. When Stephens decided, after much consulta-
tion with prominent members, to start the paper he got Con
O'Mahony, his Secretary, to write a circular letter to the active
local men informing them of the project. There were no type-
writers in those days, so Con had to write all the letters with
41
42
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
his own hand. I got one of them, not by mail, but by hand,
during one of my visits to Dublin in the Fall of 1863. The cir-
cular pointed out the necessity for a newspaper organ to replace
"the thing called the Irishman", gave a description of the kind
of journal contemplated, and asked for support in its circula-
tion. There was no appeal for money. If my memory serves
me right, Denis Holland, the founder of the Irishman was still
its editor but Pigott who was Business Manager had acquired a
grip on it.
I got a supply of the first number and was greatly puzzled
by the pessimistic editorial, "Isle, Race and Doom," which I
afterwards learned was written by Stephens himself. All I could
do was to distribute them among the members and put one of
them on file in the reading room of the Catholic Institute in
Naas. I was enabled to do this by supporting Father Hughes in
a motion to have the London Times put on file. He was bitterly
opposed by Aleck Byrne, a sturdy blacksmith, who said: "Father
Hughes, I'm ashamed of you for proposing to bring in the Times,
the arch enemy of the Irish people, to be read by our members."
I wanted the Times for its foreign news and Father Hughes
wanted it for other reasons, and we won by a small majority.
After this he could not very well object to placing the Irish
People on file, but he probably never read a line of it.
I got a bundle of 25 every week, which I distributed free. I
gave five of them free every Thursday to an old newsdealer who
kept a little shop at the corner of the Sallins Road and Main
Street, so that he might sell them, and I sent a few by mail to
prominent people. Two country school teachers whom I had
sworn in and whose salary was only £40 a year I put on the
mailing list in the office of the paper, as they lived too far away
for me to deliver them, and after a while Con O'Mahony, who
was a clerk in the office, sent them bills. When they failed to
pay the bills he dropped them, and when I heard of it I told
Rossa, who was Business Manager, and he reprimanded O'Mahony
sharply. "You know the miserable salaries that country school-
masters get," he said to O'Mahony, who had been a teacher him-
self, "and these men can do a lot of good by handing the paper
around." Con pleaded "business reasons", and Rossa said: "To
the devil with your business reasons. The organization can't be
run on business principles and we must push it in every way we
can. Put them back on the list."
When I offered him payment for the 25 copies I was getting,
Rossa asked me: "How much salary are you getting, John?" I
told him £50 a year and he said: "Oh, trash, man, you have a
lot of expenses to bear" (which was true) "and I won't take your
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
43
money." He then told O'Mahony to send me 50 copies and no
bills.
There was a good deal of that kind of circulation, and some
newsdealers who were not members kept the paper on their
stands. But the paper was beginning to make some headway
among the intellectual classes. When the paper was suppressed
the names of several prominent people were found among the
list of subscribers.
Among those I recollect were Isaac Butt, Mr. Bushe (a son or
grandson of the man Who voted against the Union), Mrs. Par-
nell, mother of Charles Stewart Parnell, and a Protestant Min-
ister named Gilmour.
Mrs. Parnell herself called at the office of the paper to hand
in her subscription, holding a little boy by the hand. Many
years later I asked her was it Charles and she answered: "No;
it was a brother of his who died before reaching manhood." Mrs.
Parnell was a strong sympathizer with the movement, and in
1866 paid the passage to New York of several of the American
officers, released from Mount joy Prison on condition of leaving
the country, among whom were Colonel Michael Kerwin and
Lieutenant-Colonel John W. Byron. She also sheltered at her
home in Avondale, County Wicklow, several men who were "on
the run".
The Minister, Mr. Gilmour, was Rector of Rathmore, County
Kildare, and a splendid man in every way. How he came to sub-
scribe was this: There was a little old man named Gallagher
who had a small plot of land in the Bog of Allen, whose father
had to flee from Mayo for shooting a landlord and had found a
refuge in the Bog. His son had a pony and a small creel and
he eked out a poor living by selling loads of turf in Naas. As
I did my own cooking on the fine kitchen range of the old Cork
Mail Coach office, where I lived, I bought my turf from Gallagher
at three and sixpence a load, and swore him in. One day the
Minister bought a load from him and when it was delivered Mr.
Gilmour was not in the house. While waiting for his three and
sixpence Gallagher curled himself up in a corner of the creel
and was absorbed in reading the Irish People when the Minister
came along and said to him: "I see you are reading. What
paper is it?" Gallagher started to fold it up and put it in his
pocket, not wishing to let the Minister see it, but Mr. Gilmour
said: "Let me look at it," and the old man reluctantly gave it to
him. The Minister looked over it with great interest for a few
minutes and said: "Why, this is a fine paper. Where did you
get it?" "From a man in Naas that I sould a load of turf to,
sir," answered Gallagher.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
The Rev. Mr. Gilmour at once sent his subscription to the
paper and I learned later in New York from Tom Burke, a
Rathmore man, that he lent it every week to a doctor and a
veterinary surgeon, who were neighbors and who read it regu-
larly. Tom knew the Minister very well and told me he was a
strong Nationalist. Tom was a great poacher and did his cours-
ing while the Protestants were at church. On his way home he
would throw a hare into the Minister's kitchen and the Minister,
the doctor and the veterinary surgeon saved him from punish-
ment when he was caught once by Byrne, the owner of the
Punchestown Racecourse.
The principal letter writer to the Irish People was James F.
X. O'Brien, of Cork, who was convicted for his part in the Rising
and later became a Member of Parliament. His letters were
always long and well written and were signed "De l'Abbe". He
had lived in New Orleans for some years and knew French
very well.
But by long odds the best of the letter writers was Hugh Byrne
of Tinahely, County Wicklow, who had been a National Teacher
and was then a teacher in Singleton's Academy on Dawson
Street. He wrote sometimes over the signature of "Aodh an
tSleibhe" and at other times "Hugo del Monte", which means the
same thing in Spanish. He had learned Spanish in Nicaragua,
where he accompanied Walker on one of his filibustering expedi-
tions. William F. Roantree, who had also been in Nicaragua,
told me that Walker once put Byrne in the stocks for lampooning
him. He was a caustic writer, with infinite power of sarcasm,
and Walker felt the sting of his criticism very keenly. One of
Byrne's favorite contributions to the Irish People was a report of
the debates at meetings of the Laconic Club, an imaginary
organization in which most of the prominent Fenians figured
under various appropriate names that were easily recognized by
those who knew them. He had a theory that most Irishmen
were too longwinded and he took that method of teaching them
to express themselves tersely. "Con the Laconic" was Con
O'Mahony, and the cognomen fitted him exactly, so that all his
friends recognized the character. There was sound political doc-
trine in all Byrne's articles and he put a great deal in a short
space. He always sent in his contributions as articles, but
O'Leary published them as letters, although he admitted their
literary value.
One of Byrne's articles satirized leaders who spent their time
"making love in a cottage by the sea" when they ought to be
working for Ireland. It was aimed at Stephens, who, after his
marriage to Jane Hopper, spent his time idly in a cottage at
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
45
Sandymount and for a while became less active in the move-
ment. O'Leary recognized its object, but he inserted it because
he thought the criticism was deserved.
Byrne sometimes drank a little too much and he took the
pledge binding himself to take a drink only with his meals.
Rossa told me that one day while his train was stopping at a
station in Wicklow, Byrne was on the platform and Rossa asked
him to take a drink. He told Rossa of his pledge and was greatly
troubled at not being able to take a drink with his old friend.
At last he said: "Give me a penny cake," and munched it while
drinking a pint of porter. That was "whipping the devil around
the stump".
One of the most interesting letter writers was a Tipperary
schoolmaster named Brougham, whose theme was always the
Felon-Setter, a type then rather numerous in Ireland and very
mischievous. They adopted many indirect ways of calling police
attention to men whom they believed to be Fenians. Brougham,
who wrote over the signature of "Harvey Birch" (which he took
from Fenimore Cooper's novel, "The Spy"), satirized them mer-
cilessly, and the local men were always able to recognize the
fellows he aimed at very easily by his description of their
methods. His dog, "Dan", had an unfailing knack of recognizing
the Felon-Setter by the scent and always barked a warning when
one of them was approaching. "Harvey Birch's" descriptions of
the antics of the dog and their effect on the Felon-Setter were
very amusing and were read with avidity by the members every-
where. The letters were always short and as laconic as Hugh
Byrne could have desired. Brougham died in New York.
The editorials were all good, but Kickham's were the best
because there was more concentrated thought in them. Luby's
showed wide and accurate knowledge of his subject, for he was
the best read man of the staff, but he was often a little too
diffuse. O'Leary's articles were brief, but he paid more attention
to style than to the subject of the article. He was essentially
a critic and never showed enthusiasm, which was a fault in
writing for Irishmen. He was an admirer of the London Spec-
tator, although disagreeing entirely with its views, and there was
too much apparent imitation of its style in his articles. But
Kickham, in spite of his physical disabilities, understood the Irish
people better than all of them, apparently by intuition, and went
straight to their hearts. Judge Keogh, although a perjured
ruffian, also understood them, and selected Kickham's articles
as his chief point of attack in the trials. This was eloquent tes-
timony to their effectiveness, though, of course, Keogh did not
know who wrote them.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
The Irish People was not the equal of the old Nation of Duffy
and Davis, but it approached it very closely. It was essentially
a teacher and it filled the minds of the people it reached with
ideas which took a firm grip on their minds and have endured
ever since. It prepared the way for all that has since happened
and inspired the people with a new spirit. The fighting Land
League would not have been possible but for it. Two of its three
principal writers, Kickham and Luby, sympathized with the
Land League as the forerunner of better things, although they
did not join it, while O'Leary deplored it as blasting his darling
hope of getting the gentry into the National Movement. He was
not a practical man. The gentry were England's chief agents in
holding Ireland down for England, and their power had to be
broken before Ireland could make real progress towards Freedom.
This supplies the best answer to those who believed the starting
of the paper to be a mistake. The British Government did not
need the information it disclosed of the existence of a formidable
movement to overthrow its authority in Ireland, although it
showed conclusively that the men who led it had great ability.
The Irish People revived the spirit created and fostered by
the old Nation and the Young Irelanders, and carried down their
teachings to a new generation. Time has vindicated it.
CHAPTER VII.
IMPORTANT EVENTS IN 1864.
Stephens Organized Circles in the Army of the Potomac with
Full Consent of the Generals — Incriminating Document
Captured on the Person of Charles Underwood O'Connell on
His Arrival in Ireland — Proposal for Responsible Council
to Govern I. R. B. Rejected.
During the year '64, there was incessant recruiting activity in
Ireland, and there were three events of more than ordinary
importance. Stephens went to America (I believe after Kick-
ham's return) . The American organization forwarded a pro-
posal suggesting a change in the form of Government of the
I. R. B. Stephens rejected an offer by George Henry Moore
to join the organization after O'Donovan Rossa and Edward
Duffy had secured his consent.
In America, Stephens was allowed to visit the Army of the
Potomac and organize Circles among the officers and men. He
was furnished with letters of introduction from Colonel B. F.
Mullen to the Generals at the front, and the organization in
the Union Army was done with the full consent of the latter, who
were all in sympathy with the movement. Before returning to
Ireland, Stephens gave these letters to Charles Underwood O'Con-
nell for safe keeping.
O'Connell had never been at the front and had no military
experience except a few months' service in the Ninety-ninth
New York National Guard (O'Mahony's regiment) guarding Con-
federate prisoners at Elmira, N. Y. O'Mahony left the manage-
ment of the regiment to P. J. Downing, the Lieutenant-Colonel,
who had seen service in Meagher's Brigade and was a very
capable officer. He had been in the Phoenix movement in Skib-
bereen in 1858.
When Underwood O'Connell was starting for Ireland in Sep-
tember, 1865, to take part in the projected Rising, he insisted on
taking with him the letters entrusted to him by Stephens, in
spite of the remonstrances of friends. Captain Michael O'Boyle
(an Armagh man and a patriot of the finest quality) met him
at the dock and tried to persuade him to leave them in safe
hands in America, but O'Connell replied: "I got these letters
from 'The Captain' himself, and into his hands alone will I
47
48
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
deliver them." On his arrival at Queenstown he was searched
and the documents seized.
O'Connell's vanity brought misfortune on himself and other
men. The Government had no evidence against him except
what they found on his person in Cove (Queenstown), but it
was enough to secure him a sentence of ten years penal servitude
and to impose heavier sentences on the other prisoners who
were then awaiting trial. The captured letters of introduction
were used by the English Government later to prove the existence
of an international conspiracy.
The Atlantic cable was not yet in operation and nobody in
New York knew that the Irish People had been seized, many of
the leaders arrested in Dublin, and that the British Government
was engaged in a strong effort to crush the organization.
There had been at various times tentative efforts to get into
the movement such well known men as The O'Donoghue (a
grand-nephew of Daniel O'Connell) , P. J. Smyth, Alexander M.
and T. D. Sullivan, and other prominent Nationalists, but they
all came to naught mainly because of the fact that a change in
the government of the organization involved the creation of
some kind of a Council. Stephens was not willing to share his
responsibility with any advisory body, although in 1864 he cre-
ated an "Executive" that never took any action and never for-
mally met.
The idea of a regularly constituted Council or Governing
Body for the I. R. B. in Ireland was formally put up to Stephens
through a communication from the Fenian Brotherhood in
America, which the men in Dublin contemptuously called "The
Thirty-two Page Document".
Stephens called a meeting of the leading men throughout the
country to consider it. It was not a Convention or a gathering
of a body with definite powers, but a sort of meeting of notables,
and its action would not have bound Stephens if he did not
approve of it. Charles J. Kickham presided, although the pro-
ceedings had to be conveyed to him through an ear trumpet. All
the Centres of Dublin and the nearby towns were present, as
well as several from country districts. It was a very representa-
tive meeting. It was held in Joseph Denieffe's house, which, if
I remember rightly, was in Denzille Street. I happened to be in
Dublin and was invited to attend by Con O'Mahony, Stephens'
Secretary, but took no part in the proceedings.
After a very full discussion the proposal was rejected by
unanimous consent, but there was no formal vote. This put an
end to all chance of union between the "moderate" and the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
49
"extreme" sections and they drifted farther and farther apart
from that time. It also ended the chance of forming a public
movement that could speak for the country in any emergency
that might arise, but the Fenians did not see the necessity for
that and placed their whole reliance on insurrection. The evil
consequences of this became very apparent later, as the country
had no public voice until the Amnesty Movement was organized.
Calling a meeting of prominent members who had no definite
authority and putting up to them the settlement of an important
question, later became a favorite method of Stephens. It enabled
him to relieve himself of responsibility and place it on others,
without creating a Council with which he might at some time
come in conflict. The lack of a representative Council became a
great handicap as events developed.
The rejection of George Henry Moore's offer to join the I. R. B.
is dealt with in the chapter on O'Donovan Rossa.
CHAPTER VIII.
WHEN BILLY KEOGH FOR ONCE WAS MERCIFUL.
A "Practical Joke" Which Might Have Resulted in Heavy Jail
Sentences for I. R. B. Men — Testimony by the "Castle
Cawtholic" Devitt — Judge Keogh Made Drunk by Counsel
for Defense.
The consecration of a church in Kilkenny on Aug. 15, 1864,
was made the occasion of a great demonstration by the Fenians.
Excursion trains were run to the Marble City from Dublin, Cork,
Limerick and Waterford, and people gathered there from every
part of Ireland. The Fenians went in large numbers on all these
trains and several thousand of them were in the immense crowd.
As they kept grouped in separate bodies under their own leaders
and the latter were introduced to each other, the men were able
to see that they had the material for an army and were greatly
encouraged. No regular I. R. B. meeting could be held, but there
were many dinner parties, and the marching and cheering crowds
on the streets constituted an exhibition of strength that could not
be mistaken. The men went home in high spirits.
On the way back to Dublin a group of young men in the
second last car of one of the excursion trains played a practical
joke which led to the arrest of two of them and their trial at the
next Assizes at Naas. At the station at Kildare, John O'Donovan,
son of the great Gaelic scholar, then a student in Trinity College,
and Matthew Hunt, a medical student from Cappoquin, County
Waterford, tried to detach the last car of the train to give their
friends in it a scare, but as there was a double coupling and they
only interfered with the chain one, the train went on intact to
Newbridge, which is the next station, and the coupling was set
right.
At the Kingsbridge Terminus in Dublin, Hunt and a printer
on the Irish People named Martin were identified as the culprits
by a Dublin wine merchant named Devitt and arrested. Devitt,
who had begun life as a porter, was a purse-proud, bumptious
man, with a face that indicated a liberal consumption of his
own beverages. He was a "Cawtholic" and a great friend of
Archbishop Cullen. He held the Fenians in holy horror. "Com-
mon disturbers" and "riff-raff" were the terms most commonly
used to describe them by this snob, who had once been a work-
ingman earning ten shillings a week. Devitt had dined well in
50
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
51
Kilkenny, but was sober enough to do a chalk line and he was
walking up and down the platform at Kildare "to get the air"
when the prank was played. Martin did not even resemble
O'Donovan, but the pompous Devitt swore positively that he saw
him uncoupling the car.
When the Assizes came on, a considerable number of the ex-
cursionists were on hand in Naas as witnesses on one side or
the other, but by far the greater number on that of the prisoners,
who had been released on bail.
I acted as commissary for a large number of the visitors.
Roantree and myself, the only old soldiers present, did the cook-
ing on a range which had once provided breakfast for the pas-
sengers going south from Dublin on the old mail coaches. The
house where I had bachelor quarters was still called the Cork
Office, and there was a fine, spacious kitchen. We had a plenti-
ful supply of bacon and eggs, bread, butter and tea. John O'Don-
ovan, Hunt and McConry (a '48 man whom I had known when
I was a boy) , brilliant fellows, were among the guests and their
witty jokes and stories were of a character never to be forgotten.
I may say in passing that my public association with that crowd
riveted the attention of the police upon me while in Naas.
References to the Irish People became quite common during
the cross-examination of witnesses for the defense, owing to a
broad hint given by Devitt, who was a "felon-setter" of the first
water. "What is your occupation?" asked counsel for the Crown
of Con O'Mahony. "I am a clerk," answered Con. "What kind
of a clerk?" "In a commercial house." "What commercial
house?" "A newspaper office." "And what might be the name
of the newspaper?" O'Mahony was at last obliged to say it was
the Irish People, and counsel said, "Ah, that is the Fenian paper,
isn't it?" Then John Neville (whom they nicknamed "Fire Ball")
was obliged, after much dodging, to admit that his typesetting
was done in the Irish People office and Jerry O'Farrell that he
also worked there. Then the question, "Do you work on the
Irish People, too?" was asked of every witness and wonder was
expressed if the paper could come out that week, with so many
of the staff away.
Counsel for the defense was a man named McKenna, a lawyer
of average ability who looked to be in bad health. The case
against the accused was weak from the start. It depended mainly
on the evidence of Devitt, which was flatly contradicted in the
case of Martin by half a dozen witnesses; while the testimony
of the engine driver, a man named Mulvany (who was not then
a Fenian, but became one before he left Naas) showed that the
52
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
train was not placed In any real danger from the partial un-
coupling. But Billy Keogh was the judge and the jury were
mostly country Tories, liable to be influenced by all the talk
about the Fenian paper. So McKenna made up his mind early
in the case that he would "get on the soft side" of Keogh, whom
he knew very well. "He is always in good humor when he is
drunk," he said. "We'll dine together this evening and I think I
can manage him."
Keogh and the other judges, when they came to Naas for the
Assizes, always took their meals at a quiet sort of boarding house
kept by an old lady whose name I have long since forgotten, and
who set a very good table. A broken-down servant who did odd
jobs about the town and often swept out my rooms, waited on
them. He knew all about Keogh sending the McCormacks un-
justly to the gallows, but that did not seem to bother him. But
Keogh ate meat on a Friday — a thing the old man wouldn't mind
in a Protestant — and that settled it. From this man I got the
particulars of Keogh's dinner on the last day of the trial.
McKenna dined with the judge, counsel for the Crown and
the Clerk of the Crown that evening. The case had been given
to the jury and it remained out several hours. By order of the
judge the jurymen were allowed plenty of liquid refreshment
with their dinner and they were in a mellow mood. Two or three
liberal men among them, I afterwards heard, emphasized the
youth and good appearance of the accused and the festive
character of the excursion, and somebody pointed out that Devitt
was a great Papist and a friend of the Archbishop. The Cullens
were a Kildare family, so between religious prejudice, pity for
the young men, dislike of men like the bumptious wine merchant
and, above all, the influence of sundry jorums of punch, they
took a lenient view of the case. They found Hunt and Martin
guilty, but recommended them to mercy.
At the other dinner the judge and the lawyers had a generous
supply of wine, and they topped it off with several tumblers of
punch. As the evening wore on and there was no news from the
jury, they smoked and chatted and sipped their punch until
finally at midnight, word was brought that the jury had agreed
on a verdict.
I shall never forget the scene in court. It is as vivid in my
memory now after more than sixty years as on that night in the
courthouse in Naas. The jurymen were certainly sober, but they
had taken enough to put them in good humor, and it was easy
to see that they enjoyed the scene that was enacted before them
as they would a comedy in a theatre. It was indeed a comedy
of the most solemn character. Every one of the diners was
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
53
drunk — solemnly drunk, and looking the personification of judi-
cial and legal dignity. Even the Peelers could not help smiling.
The judge, after having been helped on with his robes and
his wig, made an attempt to mount the bench, but had to be
helped to his seat. He could not sit straight and looked as
solemn as an owl with a "jag". But there was a benevolent
expression on his face which showed us clearly that McKenna
had done his work. Keogh's tongue was thick and he spoke with
great difficulty.
The Clerk put the question to the jury in a fairly clear voice
and the foreman announced the verdict and the recommendation
to mercy. The judge smiled and looked at McKenna, who arose,
braced himself by holding the railing with one hand, then leaned
against it, and in a thick voice rehearsed in court the plea for
clemency which had been agreed on over the punch. Then his
Lordship turned to the lawyer for the Crown and said something
which nobody outside the railing could catch, and that worthy,
holding on to the back of a chair with both hands, mumbled out
some solemn nonsense about the enormity of the offense, and
concluded with a reference to his Lordship's well known charac-
ter for clemency, but expressed the hope that in this case its
exercise would not tempt other young men to follow the example
of the prisoners in the dock. The learned counsel nearly missed
his chair as he sat down, but was helped by an attendant and
got into his seat in safety. Keogh, who had been nodding during
the remarks of the last speaker, made a vain effort to sit up
straight and, while his body swayed, he uttered some incoherent
sentences about danger to travellers, the wild pranks of youth
and the responsibility that rested on the shoulders of judges. He
had to cut it short on account of sheer inability to continue and
wound up by ordering the release of the accused on their own
recognizances to appear for sentence when called on. Then he
beamed on the prisoners, and McKenna, with some difficulty, got
to his feet and thanked his Lordship for his generous action,
which was also, he added, eminently just and proper in view of
the character of the evidence. The prisoners were released and
the judge and his fellow diners had a deoch an dorais before
going to bed.
Mulvany was discharged soon after the trial by the Great
Southern and Western, at the instance of Devitt. He and the
other felon-setters waged unrelenting war on the Fenians, many
hundreds of whom lost their jobs in this way. Mulvany came to
the United States, but could never become accustomed to Ameri-
can railroad methods, which he considered reckless in the ex-
treme. He had "railroaded" all over the country when I met
54
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
him on Broadway in the 'seventies and the recognition was
mutual. "Always get in the last car, Johnny," he said, after
reciting some of his experiences. "If she goes down over a broken
bridge, you'll have a chance of coming out on top." The evidence
he gave in Naas was the exact truth, but telling the truth in
favor of Fenians was a crime in the eyes of the felon-setters, and
Devitt, the pious Cawtholic, found ready listeners in the True
Blue Directors of the Great Southern and Western Railway.
Matt Hunt died of consumption about a year from that trial.
Poor Martin was killed in a collision between cabs in London some
years later, and I read an account of the funeral in a paper
smuggled into Chatham Prison.
That trial was the only occasion on which I ever heard of
Billy Keogh being merciful, and it was the drink that did it. His
florid face showed that he was a confirmed toper. I thought
of that queer midnight scene in Naas when I stood before Keogh
in Green Street Courthouse for sentence three years later, and
again in New York when I read the cabled report that he had
cut his throat in Belgium. Drink influenced his action in both
cases, but he must have had some remnant of a conscience and
that led to his seeking alcoholic consolation for his life of sordid
treachery. His betrayal of the people was rewarded by the judge-
ship and he prostituted the Bench to the service of his employers.
And, like the other traitor, Castlereagh, Keogh died by his own
hand, setting an example to the ruffian Pigott, which the latter
followed after the exposure of his Parnell forgeries.
Billy Keogh's bitter antagonism to Irish Nationalists was
exhibited with most effect in the trials of the Fenian leaders.
As O'Donovan Rossa during his trial defied and humiliated him,
I will relate that story and give more details of the treachery of
Keogh and his fellow scoundrels Sadleir and O'Flaherty, in the
chapter on Rossa.
PART II.
CHAPTER IX.
"THE YEAR OF ACTION."
Stephens Announced the Fight Would Take Place in 1865 —
Colonel Kelly Reported Favorably on Conditions — P. J.
Meehan and the "Lost Documents".
When Stephens returned to Ireland after his American trip
he announced to practically everybody that the fight would take
place in 1865. "Next year is the year of action" was the way he
put it. I went into Dublin very often and always visited the Irish
People office. About a week after his return Con O'Mahony told
me "The Captain" wanted to see me and I called on him. There
was nobody else present and I found him in fine spirits. After
giving me a glowing account of conditions in America, striding
up and down the room, as was his custom, he said: "We'll fight
next year." Knowing the utter lack of arms, I said: "What'll
we fight with?"
He paused in his walk, turned to me and replied: "Oh, we'll
get all the arms we need from America. We'll have more than a
hundred thousand rifles and a good supply of artillery."
I asked: "What about officers?" and he assured me there would
be plenty, including several Generals and quite a number of
Colonels, all of them veterans. "We'll get three thousand offi-
cers from Chicago alone", he added.
This was too much for me and I said: "Why, there can't be
three thousand officers in all the Chicago regiments". He saw
that I was a doubting Thomas and he explained that he meant
the Chicago District, which included the whole West.
His habit of exaggeration was incurable and while I was much
encouraged by his account of affairs in America I could not help
feeling that I must take some of it with a grain of salt.
After that he "swung round the circle" for some weeks, visit-
ing all the chief cities and seeing the principal workers, with
the result that the men everywhere were filled with enthusiasm.
Drilling went on more intensively and the whole organization
felt that the long wished-for fight for Freedom was coming at
last, with fine hopes of success. Had the Rising taken place in
1865 while this spirit prevailed and the organization was still
55
56
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
intact, instead of in 1867, when only a broken remnant of it re-
mained and many of the best men were either in prison or refu-
gees in England or America, the history of Fenianism would have
been very different. How and why the postponements were made,
and the fight decided on when all the chances of success had
disappeared, is a sad record of blunders and incapacity that will
be told elsewhere. And it was the man who built up the move-
ment and filled it with enthusiasm who was the chief cause of
the failure. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the situ-
ation got beyond him and that he had not the capacity to deal
with it. The Split in America unnerved him and blasted all the
high hopes he had cherished of military and financial aid. Splits
have proved ruinous to every Irish movement for more than a
century, and until the Irish people have taken that lesson to
heart, final success will be beyond their reach.
This particular Split which occurred in the Fenian Brother-
hood of America in 1865, is dealt with briefly in the sketch of
John O'Mahony. It would require a large volume to give its full
history, which would include two attempts to invade Canada, one
in 1866, the other in 1870, and examination of many documents,
with reports of meetings and conferences, personal letters and
other data, of which I am not now capable. It is a most inter-
esting subject, and I hope it will some time be dealt with by
competent hands.
The organization in Ireland had a very busy time, owing to
Stephens' announcement that "next year (1865) is the year of
action". All sorts of preparations were going on, except the es-
sential one of procuring arms. That was ignored, on account
of "The Captain's" assurance that we'd get all we wanted from
America.
Pike making was the only kind of arming thought of, and that
was a waste of time, as pikes would be useless against long range
rifles. Country blacksmiths made many and Stephens estab-
lished a pike factory in Dublin, under the management of Michael
Moore, who was a blacksmith. His two assistants were Patrick
Kearney, an ex-British soldier who was one of the Dublin Centres,
and Michael Cody, one of Kearney's "Bs". The assistants did
not get along with Moore and there were constant disputes.
Finally two separate pike shops were started, with Kearney at the
head of the second. Kearney was a man of great natural ability,
with a strong will and a fiery temper. He and Cody were much
criticized for the trouble, without just cause.
Nicholas Walsh, an artist of considerable ability, who was
Centre of one of the smaller Circles in Dublin (he died some
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
57
years later in Florence) , commenting on the finely chiselled
features and splendid physiques of these two men, said to me:
"Why, they are like two Greek statues." Kearney died in
Dublin a few years later, after living a while in New York, and
Cody (who educated himself in prison by the help of the other
prisoners) , became head of the organization in Australia after
his release in 1869, and lived to a good old age.
Kearney had a fine military mind and said that pikes would
be very useful in street fighting in Dublin, which he favored, in-
stead of "taking to the hillside."
Early in 1865, Capt. Thomas J. Kelly arrived from Amer-
ica as an Envoy to report on the military situation in Ireland,
so as to satisfy the leaders in America that a fight that year
was possible. He was very much impressed by Kearney's idea of
a fight in Dublin and with the military fitness of the men gen-
erally. Instead of going back to America he decided to remain in
Ireland and sent his report, which was very favorable as to mili-
tary possibilities, by messenger. He was a very competent judge,
as he had been a staff officer in the Army of the Cumberland,
with opportunities of seeing movements on a large scale and
knowing why they were made. He was wounded at the Battle
of Missionary Ridge, and mustered out of the service.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Kelly was working as a
printer in some city in Tennessee — I don't know whether it was
Memphis or Nashville — and made his way with much difficulty
to Cincinnati, where he joined the Federal Army.
I met him first at the races of Punchestown in April, 1865, with
William F. Roantree, and Montague of the Fifth Dragoon Guards
who had deserted and gone to America, but had been ordered
back to Ireland by Stephens and had obeyed the order. One
would expect that the races of Punchestown, at which several
thousand visitors from Dublin were always present, would be
closely watched, but Roantree and I knew practically all the
"G." men and we did not see one, and in the evidence given at
the trials later there was not a word said about it.
Kelly was the second last of the American Envoys. His
action in deciding to remain in Ireland and cast in his lot with
the Home Organization seemed to have been conclusive evi-
dence to the doubting Thomases in America that everything was
all right in Ireland, and O'Mahony began to send over officers
steadily after receiving his report.
The first to arrive was Lieutenant-Colonel John W. Byron of
the Eighty-eighth Regiment, Meagher's Brigade. I met him a
few days after his arrival at the European Hotel in Bolton Street,
58
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
where he was stopping. He was wounded in the foot at the Bat-
tle of the Weldon Railroad, taken prisoner and remained in Libby
Prison until the end of the war, when he started for Ireland. He
was from Clogheen, County Tipperary, and when he went there
to see his relatives, made the acquaintance of Lord O'Callaghan,
who invited him to do some shooting on his estate. His Lordship
was very much shocked when he learned a little while after that
his guest had come from America to help to overthrow the Brit-
ish Government, of which he was a loyal supporter.
The Envoy previous to Kelly was Henry C. McCarthy, Vice-
President of the Fenian Brotherhood in America. He was de-
scribed as a very able man, and P. W. Dunne and the Scanlans
told me many years after that if he had lived there would have
been no Split, but that he would have automatically stepped into
O'Mahony's place. He died in Chicago, where he was a State
Senator, just on the eve of the Split. I met him in Dublin and
he impressed me as a very clear-headed man, but I cannot recall
the year, though I think it was 1864. He also made a favorable
report of conditions in Ireland.
The last Envoy that went to Ireland was Patrick J. Meehan,
then Editor of the Irish American, New York. P. W. Dunne
went at the same time, and I gained the impression from numer-
ous conversations I had in later years with the latter that
Meehan was not sent to investigate like the others, but that he
was making a trip to Ireland and that the Fenian Senate made
him the bearer of a draft for a large sum of money to mark their
satisfaction with the report submitted by Kelly (who was then
and afterwards known as Colonel Kelly), and he had a note of
introduction to Denieffe.
There has been much talk ever since of the "Lost Documents",
but, so far as I could ever learn, there were no documents except
the note of introduction to Denieffe and the draft. The Govern-
ment never produced any at the trials, which is fairly conclusive
proof that they had not any.
The note of introduction and the draft were found on the
platform of the railroad station at "Kingstown" by a girl em-
ployed in the telegraph office and given to the Manager, who
(being a Loyalist) turned them over to the police. The report
given to the newspapers at the time exaggerated the importance
of the find, but said nothing about the draft. Denieffe was
called on by P. W. Dunne and told that Meehan was coming
to visit him and Dunne arranged the meeting. In Denieffe's ac-
count of his interview with Meehan he says that Meehan told
him he had lost the papers and the draft, and described his later
COLONEL THOMAS J. KELLY
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
59
efforts to cash the "second of exchange", but does not mention
the amount of the draft, which was payable to him.
Meehan explained that he had pinned the papers to the top
of his drawers, that the pin got loose and the papers fell down
without his noticing it. The note of introduction was used at
the trials in December and January, and it, together with the
draft, helped to show the connection between the Home Organi-
zation and the Fenian Brotherhood in America, but the proof
was by no means conclusive. The Government had all the proof
it needed in the documents found on O'Connell, but the draft
showed the danger of allowing the movement to go on.
On account of the exaggerated reports in the newspapers of
the importance of the "Lost Documents", there was great indig-
nation against Meehan among the men in Dublin and some hot-
heads talked of killing him, but Stephens speedily put a stop to
that. The worst that Meehan could be accused of was criminal
carelessness. He must have talked loosely in Dublin, for P. J.
Smyth told me when I dined at his house in 1879 that he had
sneered at the movement in a talk with him as having no rep-
resentative men, and he had heard that Meehan did the same
with Alex. M. Sullivan, whom he knew to be hostile to the move-
ment. But there was no foundation whatever for a charge of
treachery. Meehan was shot some years later in New York by
Dr. Keenan, a disgruntled employe of the organization, but his
motive was personal vengeance. Meehan carried the bullet in his
body to the grave. The truth is that he was a drinking man and
was undoubtedly under the influence of liquor when the incident
of the "Lost Documents" occurred.
I knew his son, Thomas F. Meehan, during the Land League
days and he was a most estimable man. He married the daughter
of Patrick O'Rourke, the Treasurer of the Fenian Brotherhood.
CHAPTER X.
GETTING READY FOR THE FIGHT.
The Fenian Organization in the British Army in Fine Shape —
Morale of the Fenian Soldiers Excellent — Competent Men
in Charge of Groups in Each Regiment — Plan to Blow Up
Woolwich Arsenal Not Sanctioned.
Stephens, in October, 1865, placed me in charge of the
Fenian organization in the British army in Ireland, but it was
impossible for me to visit personally all the military stations. I
concentrated my efforts on Dublin, the Curragh Camp and Ath-
lone, and made such arrangements as I could to have the sol-
diers in the other garrison towns looked after by local men.
Several of our best men throughout the country made frequent
trips to Dublin at this period to report to Colonel Kelly and re-
ceive orders, and I saw most of them. I was able thus to have
the military organization looked after in a general way by com-
petent men in Cork, Fermoy, Buttevant, Limerick, Waterford,
Templemore, Cahir, Kilkenny, Birr, Mullingar, Longford, Dun-
dalk, Newry and Belfast. These men did no recruiting, but kept
in touch with a few men in the regiments. Other places were
wholly unattended to, and this was largely true of most of Eng-
land also. It was a time of stress, and we had to confine our
operations within certain limits.
I made several trips to the Curragh Camp, where our interests
were looked after by Daniel Byrne of Ballitore, County Kildare, a
cousin of the other Daniel Byrne, who aided John Breslin in
the escape of Stephens. He worked in one of the canteens and
knew personally the best men in the camp and in Newbridge
Barracks. There were then about 3,000 men on the Curragh, of
whom we had 1,200; and a regiment of cavalry and a battery of
artillery were in Newbridge. I instructed Byrne to do no recruit-
ing. He was a rather imprudent man, whose zeal often carried
him away. After a time he had to leave the Curragh in order to
avoid arrest and went to Dublin.
Athlone I visited twice. It was a most important position
from a military point of view. Colonel Keating, in his work on
the Defence of Ireland, calls it the most important. There were
then 30,000 rifles and a lot of military stores in the arsenal,
guarded only by about 500 infantry, a battery of artillery and
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
61
about forty men of the garrison artillery. The infantry was com-
posed of the Fifth Foot, one wing of which — about 250 men — was
stationed in Castlebar, and there was not another soldier in the
whole Province of Connacht. Galway and Sligo were then un-
garrisoned. The majority of the Fifth were Englishmen, but we
had 200 good men in the regiment, mostly Ulster Catholics, and
the Centre was an Armagh man named Quinn, a quiet, staunch,
resolute fellow, entirely devoted to the Cause. One of the risks
he was prepared to take was participation, on the inside, in an
attempt to capture Athlone by surprise.
In Mullingar, the only town on the Midland Railroad between
Dublin and Athlone that had a garrison, there was a regiment
of infantry in which we had a good many men. They were looked
after by the local Centre, a quiet, discreet man, whose name I
do not remember, but he acted under the direction of Captain
Joseph Carroll, a Tipperary man who had a fine record as an of-
ficer in the Union army in the American Civil War. He was a
Captain in the Fifth New York Cavalry, served under Sheridan
in his famous Shenandoah Valley campaign and in the pursuit
of Lee's army up to Appomattox, and was wounded at the Battle
of Winchester. Carroll, who had been assigned to the command
of the Mullingar district, took up his quarters at a hotel at the
railway station kept by Mr. Jude, the proprietor of a then famous
Dublin restaurant. The younger Jude had taken a great fancy
to Carroll, who swore him into the organization, and his friend-
ship for a time diverted suspicion from the American officer,
who was supposed to be stopping there for his health. The Cen-
tre in Mullingar was a carpenter working for the Midland Rail-
way; the head waiter in the restaurant was a Dublin member
named Thomas Owens, and through them communication was
made very easy. The situation was so well in hand that I found
it necessary to pay only one visit to Mullingar.
In Longford, which was important because of its proximity to
Athlone, there was a regiment of cavalry. It was looked after by
the civilian Centre, Thomas F. Williams, to whom I have pre-
viously referred. He made frequent trips to Dublin in 1865-66, so
it was not necessary for me to go to Longford at all.
Birr, where there was a regiment of infantry, was also within
supporting distance of Athlone and was attended to by the local
Centre, whose name I do not remember. There was not a soldier
in either Meath or in Queens County, although Portarlington,
where there is an important railroad junction, from which a
single-track line ran to Athlone, would naturally require a gar-
rison. If I recollect aright there were only twenty-two police-
men in Portarlington. I visited the town in October, 1865.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
As we meant to strike our heaviest blow in Dublin, Colonel
Kelly ordered me to devote my best efforts to the garrison there.
I had the accurate figures from the soldiers then and I estimated
the garrison at 6,000 men, the majority of whom were Irish and
among them we had 1,600 members. Figures sent me recently
from Dublin, copied from the Army List in the Libraries and cov-
ering 1866, would make the garrison smaller, but several regi-
ments I knew to be in Ireland, and some of whose men I have
since met in America, do not figure in it, and there is no mention
of artillery or engineers. This list was apparently made out after
the whole year, but the Dublin Freeman in those days published
the "Stations of the Army" once a month, and I checked off my
figures by that at the time. The Sixth Carbineers, whose arrival
in Dubin I witnessed in February, 1866, and whose light blue uni-
form I distinctly remember, is one of the regiments omitted in
the list. It also fails to mention any troops stationed in Mullingar,
Birr, Longford or Castlebar, and I knew that all these places then
had garrisons.
But the crack Fenian regiments — those in which our organi-
zation was best — are all in the list. The Eighth, Twenty-fourth,
Sixty-first and Seventy-third Foot, the First Battalion Sixtieth
Rifles, the Fifth Dragoon Guards, Ninth Lancers and Tenth
Hussars are all included, as stationed in Dublin. The Seventy-
third was supposed to be a Scotch regiment and wore plaid
trousers and a Scotch cap, instead of the usual forage cap, but
we had 300 men in it, and the Centre, a very good man named
Flynn, reported to me immediately on his arrival in the middle
of February, 1866. Irishmen were also numerous in several of
the Highland regiments, wearing kilts. We had over a hundred
men in one of them. These Irishmen had enlisted in Scotland.
In estimating the strength of the garrison of Dublin, we in-
cluded the old soldiers at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, as
most of them, though not capable of a long march, would be fit
for duty in an emergency and were armed with the old musket.
If my recollection is correct they numbered 2,000 men. The Old
Man's House, as the Dublin people called it, was then the Head-
quarters of the Commander of the Forces in Ireland and the
capture of it figured in all our calculations. Sir Hugh Rose
— afterwards Lord Strathnairn — was the man who blew the
Sepoys "from the cannon's mouth" in the great Indian Mutiny
(1857), and had been recently installed in command in Ireland
because his character for ruthless sternness seemed to fit him
best for the work of putting down the Fenians. There came with
him to Ireland another Scotch soldier, General Sir Alfred Hors-
ford, who had a fine military record in India and who seemed
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
63
to me to be a more capable and enterprising man than Rose, as
his management of the short campaign against Colonel O'Connor
in Kerry in February, 1867, seemed to prove.
My work, as ordered by Colonel Kelly, was to organize the
men already sworn in, rather than to spread the organization, but
the public trials stimulated interest among the soldiers, and men
were constantly brought to me. I swore in some hundreds dur-
ing my four months of activity, but my chief attention was
given to getting the men in the various regiments into shape.
The Centre of each regiment, except the Tenth Hussars, had been
appointed by my predecessors, but no men had been assigned
to take care of companies. After consultation with the Centres
I picked out a man for each company of infantry and troop of
cavalry and got the Centres to appoint them. This took some
weeks and later the men in each company were divided into
sections, or squads, with a man in charge of each, so that by the
end of December, 1865, the organization in the Dublin garrison
was in fairly good shape.
While there was a very general knowledge in each regiment as
to the men who were in charge, there was little certainty, and
each group of men only knew their immediate superior. Not one
informer was able to name the Centre of his regiment and the
prosecutor was evidently ignorant that such a man existed. But
the knowledge as to membership was very widespread, not only
in each regiment, but in the whole garrison. A Fenian soldier
very quickly found out another and a remarkable spirit of com-
radeship was developed. There was a very ready acceptance by all
of an appointment or a decision and a remarkable absence of
jealousy. Soldiers are accustomed to obey orders and the spirit
of discipline among the Fenians in the army was admirable.
Our men were the soberest lot of soldiers I ever saw. Having
to meet in public houses, because there was no other place avail-
able, some drinks had to be called for as an excuse, but it was
never whiskey, and the quantity of porter consumed was very
small. During those four months of incessant activity, visiting
public houses every night, with from ten to twenty soldiers
always present, I did not see half a dozen of our men even slightly
under the influence of drink. I have a distinct recollection only
of two cases, and they were both on the same occasion, at a gath-
ering, with none but our own men present, in a room over Hoey's
public house in Bridgefoot Street, where the bartender, a man
named Furey, was a member. I am reminded forcibly of this
by the testimony of one of these two men at the trial of John
Boyle O'Reilly. He was a corporal of the Tenth Hussars, an Irish
Cockney named Fitzgerald, who swore that he was drunk on that
64
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
occasion, as an excuse for not having a clearer recollection ol
what took place. He was slightly under the influence of drink
but he had got it elsewhere. I had sworn him in on a previous
occasion when O'Reilly brought him to me, but he swore that he
never took the Fenian oath, and the rest of his testimony was
intended to clear himself, rather than to convict O'Reilly. This
necessity was put upon him by the spy, Patrick Foley of the Fifth
Dragoon Guards, swearing that Fitzgerald had made a speech
on that occasion. He did, and it was the only time such a thing
was done.
Our business with the soldiers was transacted at gatherings
which were in no sense meetings, in the generally accepted mean-
ing of the term. Mostly there were other men present, both
civilians and soldiers, in the taprooms where those gatherings
took place, and there was absolutely no discussion. While the
others sat at a table, conversing about nothing in particular, I
took the man I wanted to talk to aside and spoke to him private-
ly, either receiving reports (which was most commonly the case) ,
or giving orders. When men were brought to me to be sworn in,
they were taken out into the yard singly, or upstairs to an un-
occupied room, if in a friend's house, and the work was done
there. The rule was that a civilian should do the swearing in,
so as to minimize the danger to the soldier who had brought the
recruit.
The place where the swearing was done was selected be-
cause of the privacy, and all sorts of queer and out of the way
locations were made to serve the purpose. At an earlier date in
1865 I had stood guard on the Cabra Road while Roantree, my
predecessor in charge of the work in the army, swore in a ser-
geant of police in a field just inside the ditch. They lay down,
with their faces to the ground, as if enjoying the sun and a
smoke, and the little prayer book, well concealed, was passed from
hand to hand while the oath was administered. The sergeant
was a schoolfellow and boyhood chum of Roantree in Leixlip. He
had enlisted in the army, became an expert at drill and then
joined the police and was drill instructor for the Constabulary
recruits at the depot in the Phoenix Park. The prayer book, small
enough to fit in the vest pocket, was carried constantly by every
Fenian empowered to swear in men. The Bible mentioned by
some of the military informers was never used. They simply in-
vented it, or Captain Whelan (a British officer) did it for them.
In holding these gatherings of soldiers we avoided the places
that had been used by our predecessors, which were mostly
situated near the various barracks, and were known to the police.
We selected public houses owned or managed by friends, and
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
65
changed them frequently when we had reason to believe we had
attracted too much attention. There were only two real meet-
ings of soldiers held— the one at Hoey's in Bridgefoot Street,
already mentioned, and the other in the private parlor of Peter
Curran, over his public house in Clare Lane. Here I gathered
about twelve men each from the Fifth Dragoon Guards and the
Tenth Hussars for a conference with Captain McCafferty, who
had been an officer in Moseby's Guerrillas in the Confederate
Army. Kelly had a great opinion of him and wanted him to
meet our best men in the cavalry regiments.
McCafferty had done some very daring feats in the Civil War,
of which Kelly had told me. On one occasion he had got inside
the Union lines with a detachment of Morgan's men, captured
a lot of ammunition, loaded it on steamers or tugs which he had
seized and brought his booty down the Mississippi, under the Are
of the Federal batteries. I had related these stories to our cavalry
men and told them that McCafferty was to be their commander,
or would pick a number of them for special service, so they were
naturally very eager to meet him.
McCafferty was essentially a man of action, very chary of
words and his manner was cold. They were a fine body of men,
highly trained in the old school of cavalry tactics and believers
in the charge with sword or lance. McCafferty's experience was
with irregular cavalry, who never charged, and who only fought
at close quarters when necessary in their raids, and depended
mainly on the revolver. In a few brief words and with a very
quiet manner, he told them what could be done by insurgent
cavalry under existing circumstances in Ireland. He began by
saying: "I believe in a partisan warfare." Probably only O'Reilly
and one or two more knew what the word "partisan" meant, but
if he had said "guerrilla" warfare, they would have understood
him. One of them, Martin Hogan of the Fifth Dragoons, was
one of the two or three best swordsmen in the British army and
had cut in two at one stroke of his sabre a bar of iron hanging
from a barrack room ceiling. "Do you mean, sir," asked Hogan,
"that you wouldn't use swords at all?" "Nothing but revolvers,"
said McCafferty quietly, and the trained swordsmen were all dis-
appointed.
But, if they had a chance of being out in the field for a few
days with McCafferty he would soon impress them with the prac-
tical character of the work he wanted them to do. Even as it
was, before the conference was over they began to understand
him better, because they knew he had seen four years of constant
fighting. But they also knew it was in a thinly settled country,
very different from Ireland. With new men who could ride a
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
horse, as most country Irishmen can do, and not wedded to old
traditions, he could probably have done better. On the other
hand, if they had met Colonel Kerwin, whose experience was in
the Army of the Potomac, in which cavalry operations were not
so different from the European methods of warfare, or Captain
Carroll, whose training under Sheridan had taught him to fight
on horseback or on foot, as the circumstances demanded, they
would have been more at home. And, besides, the two latter
were born in Ireland and spoke with an Irish accent, only slightly
modified, while McCafferty was born in Sandusky, Ohio, had lived
many years in the South, and his manner of speech puzzled
them.
The march of events, however, prevented any more such
meetings between American officers and Fenian soldiers. Early
in 1866, on account of the disastrous effects of the Split in
America, Stephens sent McCafferty on a mission to New York.
The alarm of the British Government increased rapidly and ar-
rests became more frequent. The American officers, many of
whom had been going about in American clothes which at
once attracted attention — especially their square-toed boots and
double-breasted vests — had to make themselves less conspicuous
and were warned that they must be seen less in public in day-
light.
But the work of keeping up communication with the soldiers
already sworn in, was continued in the only way it could be done,
by meeting them in public houses and talking to them individu-
ally in private. The informers, in their evidence at the courts-
martial, repeatedly admitted that this was the method, but most
of them swore falsely that the words "Fenians" and "Fenianism"
were constantly used. They followed this plan under instructions
of Captain Whelan, the Prosecutor, in order to clinch the case
against the prisoners. Neither word was ever used, nor was the
word "society", which also occurs in the evidence of the informers,
because they were wholly unnecessary. But the plainest lan-
guage was employed in these conversations about the object of
the movement — an insurrection to free Ireland from English rule.
Not once was the name of James Stephens, or that of any other
man in Ireland, used, but John O'Mahony was often spoken of,
because he lived in America and was publicly known as the
leader of the organization. The "Americans" mentioned by the
informers as being present at meetings were also myths. No
man from America was present at any of these gatherings except
McCafferty at the conference before referred to.
Besides the men in the regiments of the Dublin garrison and
those of the Eighty-seventh who had come over from Portsmouth,
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
67
there were several other soldiers who had been induced to desert,
had been supplied with clothes and sent over by our men in
various parts of England. This was done without orders. The
London men sent a batch of about twenty. These men did not
play any particular role, except two who became informers. But
there was one man who would have played a very important part
if his offer to do so had been accepted. He was a sergeant of
engineers, a Dublin man named O'Brien, who had come home on
furlough from Woolwich. He was a member of a Dublin Circle,
but had no connection with any of our men in the army. He
was brought to me by a Dublin member who guaranteed his good
faith. He needed no guarantee as to his competency, for he
talked and looked like a man of unusual intelligence.
After asking me a few questions about the prospects of getting
arms, the number of American officers, and the strength of the
organization in the army, O'Brien told me it would be quite
easy to blow up and destroy Woolwich Arsenal, or the vital parts
of it, and that he was prepared to undertake the task. These
were not the days of dynamite, but the material for the job
O'Brien could get on the spot. The work to which he was as-
signed in Woolwich made that easy and he made no stipulation
about money. I immediately communicated the offer to Kelly,
who laid it before Stephens. I did not see Stephens, but Colonel
Kelly's report of his answer was rather disappointing. Stephens
was apparently somewhat frightened at the proposition, said it
would shock the civilized world and that we were not ready for
that kind of thing yet. Kelly added that it would be the right
thing to do on the immediate eve of the fight, and that was what
O'Brien had proposed. O'Brien was more than disappointed at
the answer; he was evidently very much disgusted. He said
something about tender hearted Irishmen being unfit to fight the
English, who stopped at nothing. That was the last I saw of
O'Brien.
The organization in the British army remained in good shape
up to the end of February, 1866, and communications were per-
fect. It would have been entirely at our service, if the fight had
taken place as originally planned, in 1865, or at any time up to
the middle of February, 1866. After the first postponement, in
December, 1865, it continued to improve. No arrests of soldiers
were made until February, 1866, but even the arrest of a few of
their comrades did not break the spirit of the men. So long as
the civilian organization remained intact, some of them were
able to meet the organizers every night. The word was passed
from man to man in the barracks that everything was all right
and the soldiers remained cheerful and hopeful. Up to the third
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
week in February there was no difficulty in passing messages in
and out of the barracks, and for long after that — so long, in
fact, as the well organized regiments remained in Ireland — we
could have relied on them.
It was the repeated postponements of the fight and the sub-
sequent demoralization of the civilian movement which enabled
the Government, by courtsmartial and terrorism, to shatter our
organization in the army. But, even then, the disaffection re-
mained and the best proof that England feared it was afforded
by the sending of all the principal Fenian regiments out of Ire-
land. They were all gone before the Rising of March 5, 1867, but
the supposedly Scotch Seventy-third. There were many Fenians
in the regiments which replaced those sent abroad, but com-
munication had been broken off and there could be no concerted
action.
How this situation was brought about can only be explained
by recording the incidents which led to the two postponements
of the intended insurrection. Although that is part of the his-
tory of the civil organization, it comes in more appropriately here
because it decided the fate of Fenianism in the British army.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT STRIKES.
The "Irish People" Seized and Many Leaders Arrested — Stephens,
Kickham, Duffy and Brophy Captured at Fairfield House —
Stephens Defied the Government in Court.
In the Summer of 1865 the Government began to realize that
they had a formidable movement to deal with which could no
longer be treated with contempt. Smollen and Dawson, two of
the smartest of the "G." Division, as the Detective Branch of the
Dublin Police was called, were constantly watching the Irish
People office and trailing men from there to their homes or to the
railway stations. But the Government's chief source of informa-
tion was Pierce Nagle, Clerk of St. Laurence O'Toole Church, who
was employed as a folder in the Irish People office for one day
in the week. He had been a resident of Tipperary before coming
to Dublin, but was a native of Kilkenny. He was a spy, not an
informer, and had been supplying the Government with informa-
tion for some time before it decided to act.
Stephens trusted Nagle, although he was generally disliked,
and used him as a messenger to carry important communica-
tions to Tipperary, all of which he allowed the Castle officials to
read before he delivered them. I was among those who disliked
Nagle, on account of his whining, insinuating manner, and I was
not surprised when his true character was revealed.
The blow fell on Thursday evening, Sept. 15, 1865. Practically
the whole "G." Division and a strong force of uniformed police
swooped down on the Irish People office, seized the paper and
arrested everyone they found on the premises, as well as many
who joined the crowd after the raid began. Others were arrested
at their residences and Stephens had a narrow escape. He was
meeting some of the men at the lodgings of James Flood when
a man rushed in and reported the seizure of the paper. Stephens
at once went away and the police arrived a few minutes later,
only to find that the bird had flown. They probably did not
then know that he was living as "Mr. Herbert" at Fairfield House
in Sandymount.
In the waste paper basket all the "copy" of the articles in
the suppressed number was found, including a letter of mine
censuring Father Hughes, the Parish Priest of Naas, for de-
nouncing the organization and saying that a branch of it existed
69
70
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
in the town. His sermon started the police into renewed activity
and every suspected man was shadowed continuously for more
than a week. In fact, they were all present in the church; the
police stared at them and they stared back defiantly. This fact
was stated in my letter.
The letter was made the basis of a warrant for my arrest, but
it did not arrive in Naas until several days later. Other war-
rants were issued on letters and other papers found in the Irish
People raid.
Among those arrested at the time of the seizure of the Irish
People office on Sept. 15, or within the next few days were Thomas
Clarke Luby, John O'Leary and O'Donovan Rossa. Several ar-
rests were also made in Cork and other cities. The Castle evi-
dently hoped to bag all the leaders at one swoop, but did not
succeed. It was a hard blow, all the same, but it did not pro-
duce the effect intended. The Government hoped it would strike
terror into the rank and file, but it had the contrary effect.
Irishmen are always at their best in the face of danger and they
are best of all when their backs are to the wall facing heavy
odds. A few ran away, but the great majority rose splendidly to
the occasion and became more active then ever. Many outsiders,
some of them men of standing, joined the organization through-
out the country and recruiting went on rapidly.
Stephens lay quiet and entrusted the management of the
organization to Colonel Thomas J. Kelly (later rescued in Man-
chester) and he was a more efficient manager than Stephens
himself. He had kept away from the Irish People office and the
Government was apparently unaware of his presence in Dublin.
The "G." Division were good enough as thief catchers, but were
no good for political work. Their whole reliance was on in-
formers and shadowing. Nagle knew nothing of Kelly and his
knowledge of the organization was very limited.
Stephens was arrested at Fairfield House, Sandymount, on
Nov. 11, 1865, with Charles J. Kickham, Hugh Brophy and Edward
Duffy. He had been staying there for months under the name of
Herbert. Dublin Castle had no knowledge of his whereabouts,
and the other men, all wanted by the police, were his guests.
There were many versions of how the detectives discovered his
presence at Fairfield House; his own opinion was that he was
betrayed.
Some documents were seized by the detectives, among them
being a list of the American officers, with the amount of money
paid to eacb.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
71
The following account of the proceedings in the Magistrate's
Court when the prisoners were arraigned for trial is taken from
the Dublin Freeman's Journal of November 15:
Some time elapsed before Mr. Stronge took his seat on the
Bench, and during the interval, the prisoners, who did not
seem in the least depressed, occupied themselves in conver-
sation and in reading the daily papers. Mr. C. R. Barry,
Q.C., M.P., Law Adviser, appeared for the Crown. The prison-
ers had no professional assistance when the proceedings
opened, but Mr. Irwin, Solicitor, attended on behalf of Mr.
Hopper.
Mr. Stronge, addressing the prisoners, said: "Before any
oral testimony is gone into, I wish to tell you I am about to
read the informations of the witness Nagle. After they are
read oral testimony will be given applicable to the charge,
and it will be open to any of you to cross-examine the wit-
ness."
Stephens: Would it answer your purpose to suppose
those papers read?
Mr. Stronge: That cannot be done. There are others be-
sides you charged.
Stephens: They will say the same.
Mr. Stronge: I shall now read the informations of Pierce
Nagle. Let him be sent for.
Kickham: I wish to remark that I am very deaf and in
order that I may not let anything pass unexplained or un-
contradicted, I ought to be allowed to look at the documents.
Mr. Stronge: Certainly.
Mr. Stronge then read the first informations of Pierce
Nagle giving his account of his connection with the Fenian
Brotherhood, and the facts he learned respecting the promi-
nent members of the Organization and their movements be-
fore his (Nagle's) arrest. James Stephens was the Chief
of the Brotherhood in Ireland. He went under the name
of "J. Power" and was called "The Captain". The informant
referred to a letter which Stephens sent to be read to the
members at Clonmel. This letter was signed "J. Power" and
it was read to the Fenians at Clonmel by Nagle. Amongst
other statements in the letter was one "That this should be
the year of action". When Mr. Stronge read this passage
Stephens said, "So it may."
After the examination of Nagle, Mr. Barry, Q.C., asked
Stephens to explain to Kickham that he (Kickham) could
have time to read it if he wished.
Stephens (to Kickham) : Proceedings have been stayed
until you read this. Read it carefully.
Kickham: Go on with something else. I do not like to
cause delay.
Mr. Nath Halbert was then sworn and examined by Mr.
Barry.
Mr. Halbert: I am the owner of Fairfield House, Sandy-
mount.
Mr. Barry: Did you see that agreement signed?
Mr. Halbert: I did, by Mr. Herbert.
Mr. Barry: Do you see Mr. Herbert here?
Mr. Halbert: I do (pointing to Stephens).
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Stephens: How long did I occupy the house?
Mr. Halbert: From the 1st July.
Stephens: Then I was there four months.
Mr. Halbert: Yes.
Stephens: I want that to be known for the edification
of the Detective Police.
Stephens: Did I represent myself as the son of Rev. Mr.
Herbert?
Mr. Halbert: No such thing.
Mr. Stephens: I state that for the enlightenment of the
Liberal press.
After the evidence of Stephens's arrest was read, Stephens
said he wished to ask a question of witness (Inspector Clif-
ford) .
Stephens: How much money did you find in the pocket-
book?
Clifford: £26.
Stephens: Do you swear that? Yes.
Did you say you opened the bookcase? Yes.
Did you find any documents in it? I did not search it.
Did you find any money in it? I did not search it.
Am I at liberty to ask you who searched it?
Mr. Stronge: Certainly. (To Witness) Do you know who
searched it?
Witness: Inspector Dawson searched it in my presence.
Mr. Barry said he would read some of the documents
found. One of the documents was a list of officers who had
received fees since their arrival here, together with the
amount advanced, and that paid to them on the other side
previous to their embarkation. In one column which was
headed "name" there were the names of twenty-four per-
sons, with their ranks. The next column was sums ad-
vanced. The sums varied from £1 to £4. The next head was
"amount advanced in the United States". The sums varied
from £48 to £37. One was marked "paid his own expenses".
Two persons had received £70 and others various sums rang-
ing from £10 to £70. The next column was "time of sailing"
and the dates were Sept. 1st, 1865, and various periods ex-
tending back to August.
After the closing of the case for the Crown, Mr. Stronge
asked the prisoners if they had anything to say.
Stephens: I am not bound to say anything.
Mr. Stronge: I may as well tell you at once that the case
is so clear against you that I shall be bound to commit you.
Mr. Lawless here whispered a few words to Stephens.
Stephens (to Lawless) : You look upon this matter as a
lawyer. I look upon it as a patriot.
Stephens: I feel bound to say in justification of, rather
than with a view to, my own reputation, that I have em-
ployed no lawyer or attorney in this case, and that I mean
to employ none, because in making a plea of any kind or
filing any defense (I am not particularly well up in those
legal terms) I should be recognizing British Law in Ireland.
Now I deliberately and conscientiously repudiate the exis-
tence of that law in Ireland — its right or even its existence
in Ireland. I defy and despise any punishment it can inflict
on me. I have spoken.
CHAPTER XII.
MILLEN'S BRIEF AUTHORITY.
Selected as Temporary Head of the Organization — This Action
a Bad Mistake Which Was Speedily Retrieved — Stephens
from His Prison Cell Ordered Millen to America.
A few days after Stephens' arrest, and before his rescue, a
meeting of the Dublin Centres and such of the county ones as
happened to be in town, with all the members of the Military
Council, was called by Colonel Kelly to deal with the emergency.
The meeting was held in a spacious room over Haybyrne's bar-
ber's shop in Wicklow Street, and was very well attended. Some
of the Dublin Centres had been arrested, but their places had
been promptly filled and the new men were all present. Hay-
byrne was an old 'Forty-Eight man and his son, Patrick, was a
very active member, but not a Centre. He acted as sentinel and
piloted the men to the room as they arrived.
The dissatisfaction over the lack of military preparation found
expression in an effort to put a military man temporarily in
Stephens' place. Several of the old Centres and practically all
the new ones came to me before the formal opening of the meet-
ing and insisted that I propose General Millen, Chairman of the
Military Council, for the position. We knew nothing of Millen,
except that he was Chairman of the Military Council, and we
had been told that he had been a General in the Mexican Army,
and we believed it would be easier to elect him on that account.
If a military man were at the head, we thought, he would natur-
ally start the necessary military preparations. Kelly, who was
Secretary of the Military Council, would have been the ideal
man, but he had only held the rank of Captain, while Millen
was a General, and Kerwin, Denis F. Burke and Halpin were
Colonels, and we thought it would look bad to put a man of
lower rank over their heads.
I made the motion and Matthew O'Neill, Centre of the second
largest Circle in Dublin, seconded it. We were greatly surprised
when, one after the other, all the members of the Military Coun-
cil, except Millen himself, spoke against the motion. They said
nothing against Millen, but it was quite evident that they had no
confidence in him. They pleaded for delay and urged that no
hasty action be taken. Halpin, who was a very good speaker,
with much experience in American political campaigns, spoke
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
very plausibly against taking any action until Stephens was re-
leased (a thing we all expected) , and said we should take no "leap
in the dark." He made no attack on Millen, but the insinuation
that he was unfit for the position ran through all his remarks.
Kerwin, who was not a practiced speaker at that time, put his
objections mainly on technical grounds, while Burke, who was
rather blunt, came nearer to attacking Millen than any of the
others. Kelly put his objections wholly on the certainty that
Stephens would be out in a few days and would resume the lead-
ership. But all the military men were opposed to the proposal.
John Hickey of Dunleary, or Kingstown, as it was then called,
made the longest speech against the motion, but none of the
other old Centres opposed it. A man named Hetherington from
Mullinavat, on the border of Kilkenny and Waterford, who was
"on his keeping" in Dublin, spoke briefly against it, but the
motion was passed by a large majority subject to the approval
of the absent Centres, and the meeting adjourned, with the
understanding that another would be called as soon as Stephens
was heard from.
In the meantime the following bit of excitement took place.
Superintendent Hughes was shot at the very door of the Head
Police Office beside the City Hall, but was not seriously wounded.
The man who shot him was Tom Frith, the first man I swore in
after taking the oath myself. His father kept a cattle yard in
Newmarket at the corner of Ward's Hill, where cows were kept
while waiting to be shipped to England, and a boarding house
where the dealers stopped.. The family were from the Barony of
Forth and Bargy in Wexford, where the people were of mixed
Norse and Welsh descent, and Tom was a silent, taciturn man,
but a mechanical genius. He had invented a die to cut the cop-
per for percussion caps, and had made hand grenade casings.
Frith had also carefully marked on a map of Dublin the buildings
that should be occupied when we started the fight. They in-
cluded all those seized by the men of Easter Week, 1916, and sev-
eral others. He believed, like Paddy Kearney, that we ought
to fight in the city, instead of taking to the hills.
Frith told me and two or three others of his intention to shoot
one of the prominent police officers as a reply to the arrest of
Stephens, and we tried to dissuade him, but he insisted, although
we were all under orders not to resist arrest, but we pleaded in
vain. His revolver was a cheap "Brummagen" one, loaded only
with loose powder plugged with paper several weeks previously.
Frith stood under the railing of the City Hall, which is raised
above the sidewalk, as Hughes was about to turn into the little
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
75
alley in which the Head Police Office was situated and fired at
him. Superintendent Hughes was only slightly wounded (the
powder being ineffective) ; he lay on the sidewalk a full minute
before anyone ventured out of the Central Office to pick him up.
They evidently feared there would be more shooting.
Frith walked leisurely over to Crampton Court, where a friend
was waiting with a jaunting car, and he reached his room in
Bolton Street in safety. I got him off to Liverpool the next day
and he lived there for many years.
Millen had arranged that one of the men should be the
medium of communication between him and the Dublin Centres,
and it was this man that put Frith on the jaunting car who was
selected. I was waiting in Fitzpatrick's little public house at the
corner of Dame and George's Street, where the bartender, John
Hollowed (later a prosperous liquor dealer in Chicago) was one
of our trusted men. When this man came in, his face was very
pale and an excited look in his eyes. I knew the job had been
done and he was about to speak, but I signalled him to say noth-
ing, as there was only a little space outside the counter, at which
three or four men were standing.
After our conversation he decided to report to General Millen,
and I accompanied him. We found Millen at tea with a lady, to
whom he did not introduce us, and whose face seemed familiar
to me, but I did not recall who she was until I heard later that he
had married a Miss Power of Tipperary, who was engaged to
Denis Dowling Mulcahy, one of those recently arrested. There
was strong feeling against both — against her for breaking her en-
gagement and him for taking a mean advantage of an impris-
oned man.
Millen was greatly upset by the news and expressed the hope
that none of the "As" were concerned in the act — meaning the
Centres. But he had no instructions to give and we left him in
a few minutes.
At the second meeting called by Col. Kelly, Millen was not
present, but he sent a long letter in reply to one from Stephens
(written in his cell and brought to Kelly by Michael Breslin),
ordering Millen's return to the United States "to take command
of the expedition". Millen's letter protested against the order,
said he was getting from the Centres throughout the country
letters of approval of his election by the Dublin men and that he
was about to start for Belgium to purchase arms.
The admission that he was going to leave the country pro-
duced a very bad effect, which was emphasized by Kelly hinting
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
(not to the whole meeting, but in conversation with individuals)
that Millen intended to abscond with all the available funds,
which he had insisted must be turned over to him.
Those who were responsible for selecting Millen were turned
against him by his letter (which was a bid to resist Stephens'
order) and I moved that the motion I had proposed at the pre-
vious meeting be rescinded and it was done by a unanimous vote.
None of us ever saw Millen in Ireland again. Further reference
to him will be found in the chapter on James J. O'Kelly.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RESCUE OF STEPHENS.
Liberation of the Fenian Chief from Richmond Prison, Dublin —
Effected by John J. Breslin, Hospital Steward, Aided by
Daniel Byrne, Night Watchman — Strong Bodyguard Received
Him Outside the Walls.
Stephens' defiant speech when arraigned before the magis-
trate to be committed for trial led the public to believe that he
had strong resources at his back. A week later most people felt
that on the day of his arraignment he knew all about the ar-
rangements for the rescue from prison, which afterwards took
place on November 24, 1865, and that this knowledge justified his
attitude of defiance. He ever after encouraged this belief, but the
simple truth is it was utterly without foundation. Stephens at
that time knew nothing whatever of the possibility of escape and
the idea had not yet entered the mind of the man who after-
wards conceived and executed the plan which restored the Chief
Organizer to liberty.
Strictly speaking, it was not an escape, but a rescue. The ac-
counts published in the newspapers at the time were all wrong
and references to it in books since then are equally misleading.
A. M. Sullivan, although corrected in a public letter by the
principal actor in restoring the captive to freedom, says, even in
the last edition of his "New Ireland", that Stephens made his exit
through the front door of the prison. The British Government
has never done justice to the Portuguese Governor, Marquess,
whom the Castle officials dismissed for alleged criminal negli-
gence in connection with the escape. And there were thousands
of Irishmen who believed for many years after that the Fenian
Chief was released with the connivance of the British Govern-
ment.
The story of the Rescue from Richmond Prison is as follows:
Among the officers of the prison were John J. Breslin, hospital
steward, and Daniel Byrne, one of the two night watchmen.
Byrne was a member of the Fenian organization, having been
sworn in by Captain John Kirwan, the ex-Papal Zouave, but
Breslin, although a man of strong Nationalist opinions, did not
belong to the I. R. B. Neither was his brother Michael a Fenian,
who just then was a clerk in the Police Superintendent's of-
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
flee, a station which enabled him to render most important
service to the conspirators.
John Breslin had a conversation with Stephens in the prison
the day after the arrest and made up his mind at once that
he was a superior man. He had a day off a little later and found
that his brother Niall, who was an active worker in the move-
ment, was full of some idea about getting Stephens out. He
asked Niall: "Is this man necessary to the organization?" Niall
assured him that he was and John replied that it couldn't amount
to much if the loss of one man could hurt it so badly. However,
he added that it would be easy enough to take him out, but, with
the airs common to Irish elder brothers to their juniors added:
"I'd like to hear it from someone of more importance than you."
Niall put him in communication with Colonel Thomas J. Kelly
and the work of preparation for the rescue was at once begun.
All the communications between Kelly and the prison, whether
verbal or written, were carried on through Michael Breslin,
who went there in his police uniform, and his visits never aroused
the faintest suspicion. He even brought in the false keys with
which the doors were opened.
John Breslin's daily tour through the prison with the doctor
gave him many opportunities for communicating with the
prisoners. He not only accompanied the doctor and took down
his directions about medicine, but went back and delivered it,
retaining the keys until his work was done. He had ample
opportunity for personal interviews with Stephens and kept him
fully informed.
The plan was very simple and effective, and was Breslin's in
every detail. Stephens occupied one of the hospital cells in a
small corridor on the third floor. The only other occupants of
the corridor were his colleague, Charles J. Kickham, and a regular
jailbird named McLeod. The Governor, to provide against any
possibility of escape, had a police sentinel placed on the other
side of the door leading to that portion of the prison where
O'Leary, Luby, Mulcahy, Roantree and the other Fenian prisoners
were quartered, while the other entrance to the corridor was
secured by two doors, one of wood and the other of iron. McLeod
was in a cell between those of Stephens and Kickham, and had
orders from the Governor to ring his gong on the first sound of
anything unusual in the neighboring cells. This would have at
once given the alarm and have effectually prevented escape. The
policeman could not unlock the door between him and the cor-
ridor, and the iron door at the other end could only be opened
by the pass key, which was locked in the Governor's safe. The
Governor's office, where all the keys were deposited at a certain
JAMES STEPHENS
/
StiebLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
79
hour every evening, was effectually protected from all attempts
from the inside by a heavy iron gate, locked on the side facing
the main entrance.
Breslin had a latch key which opened the door of the hospital,
where he slept, and that leading to the portion of the prison
where Stephens was confined. To enable him to enter the cor-
ridor he must have a pass key, and to open the cell door another
key* He took impressions in beeswax of the regular keys in use
in the daytime, and new ones were filed down to fit the impres-
sions by Michael Lambert, an optician who was an active Fenian.
Even at this early stage of the affair a hitch occurred which
showed the lack of precision and promptness characterizing the
whole Fenian movement. The beeswax was not forthcoming at
the time appointed. After waiting several days Breslin was
obliged to go out and buy it himself, thus running the risk of
giving a clue to the police that might be the means of convicting
him if brought to trial. The keys were finally in Breslin's hands,
but even at the last moment he was obliged to do some filing on
one of them, and to run some extra risk by fitting it to the lock
of a door that Byrne, his colleague in the enterprise, could not
open.
The keys having been fitted, Colonel Kelly was notified and
'arrangements were made to receive Stephens on the outside of
the prison walls. Byrne was on watch every second night.
So sure were the authorities of the safety of the captives that
no military guard was placed in the prison, but a regiment of
cavalry and a battery of artillery were quartered at Portobello
Barracks, within fifteen minutes' walk. The only guard was a
detachment of Metropolitan Police, four of whom were stationed
inside the main entrance and others at various points in the
prison. That night care was taken that they were given plenty
of porter and they were in a heavy sleep on their chairs when
the event came off.
At the inception of the plot, Colonel Kelly sent for me and
told me the duty I was to perform. For various reasons, I hap-
pened to be better acquainted with the local officers and rank
and file of the Dublin organization than any man then within
Kelly's reach. He told me he wanted me to pick out from ten to
twelve of the very best men I knew in Dublin for a special work,
requiring courage, coolness, and self-control. They all ought to
know how to use revolvers, but were not to use their arms even
if fired upon, unless ordered to do so. They were to be capable
of making a desperate fight if necessary. I was to avoid as much
as possible selecting Centres, American officers or men filling
other positions demanding constant attention. Kelly did not
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
then tell me the exact nature of the work, but I had no doubt it
was to rescue "The Captain".
A few days later, when I reported for his approval the men
I had selected, he told me it was to act as a bodyguard for
Stephens on his release by men inside the prison; that there
would probably be no need for us, but we were to be on hand
in case any accident should interrupt the escape. A dozen men,
he said, would be quite enough, including himself and two others.
These two were John Ryan, the son of a Liverpool dry goods
merchant, a splendid type of man, mentally and physically, and
Michael Lambert, the optician. He told me I was to have charge
of the party under his directions, and I was to conceal them in
small squads in positions covering every avenue of approach to
the prison.
I selected nine men, whom I considered to be the best fitted
for all the possibilities involved in the attempt. Nearly all of
them were wanted by the police, and many afterwards suffered
imprisonment. Most of them had seen some kind of service. All
knew how to handle both rifle and revolver. Paddy Kearney
was of exceptional courage and decisive character. Michael
Cody possessed great strength and determination. He was an
ex-Dublin-militia man and had a weakness for punching peelers
occasionally. John Harrison was a corn porter of magnificent
proportions, who had spent some time in the English navy and
seen service at Bomarsund under Admiral Napier. He had never
had any difficulty with the police, but had knocked out the best
men among the Dublin coal porters who were at that time mostly
anti-Fenians. Denis Duggan was a young coach builder, who
had served in the English Volunteers, and was noted for his cour-
age and coolness. Jack Mullen was the son of a Dublin shop-
keeper and had led a roving life. When a boy he had enlisted in
the English, and had later on served in the American navy, par-
ticipating in some of the principal naval fights of the Civil War.
Matthew O'Neill was a Dublin stonecutter, who had never seen
any service. He was Centre of one of the most important Circles
in the City, and was a man of fine physique. Jack Lawler had
never been a soldier, and was rather small, but was recommended
as a man of great pluck. William Brophy was a carpenter and a
strong man. Pat Flood, a Dublin cork cutter, was a powerful
man, and an old member of the organization. These, with Kelly
and the two men chosen by him, and myself, were the only per-
sons outside the walls of Richmond prison that night.
Colonel Kelly informed me that a supply of revolvers would be
ready, so that each man would be fully armed and prepared.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
81
None of these men was informed of the nature of the work on
hand, but Colonel Kelly confided the secret to some of those
around him, and they in turn revealed it to a "few friends". I
learned after the rescue, that in this way the news spread until
at least 200 men in Dublin knew of it. The subject had become a
pretty general topic of conversation among the officers of the or-
ganization. This led to serious embarrassment. Scores of men,
especially the recently arrived Irish-American officers, felt hurt
because they were not chosen to take part in the affair, and they
angrily remonstrated. One man, a civilian, who heard the rumor
just as he was leaving for the south, was so overjoyed at the
prospect that on the very night of the escape he confided the
knowledge to a soldier of the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards,
then stationed at Ballincollig, County Cork, whom he wanted to
swear in. The trooper refused to be sworn in, and immediately
gave information to the authorities, who sent it to the Castle. It
reached Cork Hill about the time the news of the escape was
spreading dismay among the officials. Had the dragoon's story
reached Dublin a few hours earlier, Stephens would have been
sent to break stones in Portland with O'Leary, Luby, and his other
lieutenants. Another version of this incident at Cork was pub-
lished many years ago, but, apart from the details, it is certain
that the ill-advised remark of the man who conveyed the rumor
from Dublin might well have resulted in bringing to naught the
plans for Stephens' rescue.
When the night set for the rescue arrived, the plans were
ready inside the prison, and the authorities had not the faintest
suspicion of anything wrong. The same police guard did duty, no
soldier was any nearer than Portobello Barracks, and the Gover-
nor retired as usual in full serenity and without a shadow of
suspicion. I had reports from the barracks up to a late hour in
the evening and knew that no movement either of troops or
police indicated the taking of any precautionary measures, or the
existence of the slightest misgivings for the safety of the caged
Fenian Chief. The Crown lawyers and the Sheriff were busily
preparing for the trials, and every partisan of British rule in
Ireland looked hopefully forward to the speedy collapse of the
conspiracy. A few striking examples were to be made, the pris-
oners of lesser note were to be let off with short terms of im-
prisonment, and panic and demoralization could be trusted to
do the rest. Ireland would relapse into the calm of despair, and
the crowbar brigade and the emigrant ship would soon effect a
final solution of the Irish problem. Dublin Castle slept tranquilly
that night, with no warning of the panic and consternation that
was to overtake it on the morrow.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Towards midnight the little squad of men told off for a body-
guard dropped one by one into Lynch's public house in Camden
Street, a short distance from the prison, where Ned Waydick was
in charge, and quietly awaited the word to move. But the prom-
ised revolvers were not forthcoming, and much disgust was ex-
pressed. Kearney, who had a hot temper, flew into a violent
rage, and berated the leaders for their seeming neglect. He was
a born soldier, and expected soldierly precision and promptitude
in such matters. "If they mismanage a little thing like this,"
he said, "how is it going to be when the real work comes?"
The fault, however, was not that of Colonel Kelly, but of
the man to whom he assigned that duty. Had those selected for
the rescue any idea in advance that the revolvers would not be
available at the appointed time, they could have supplied them-
selves during the day. The situation had to be remedied imme-
diately, and at a late hour that evening John Ryan and I had to
hire an outside car and apply to friends living in different parts
of the city, and by midnight all but four of the men had re-
volvers. Two were brought to the spot where Colonel Kelly and a
few of the men were stationed in a field opposite the prison,
about an hour before the escape, by Nick Walsh. Eleven men
only had revolvers; one had a large knife, and a thirteenth man
had no weapon whatever, and was sent home early in the night.
Not a man refused to go to the ground, although some were un-
armed when they started out. Yet they fully expected a fight
with police, warders or soldiers before the work was finished.
The night was dark and wet, and the few policemen on duty
in the lonely neighborhood of the prison kept as much as pos-
sible under shelter. A thorough search was made of the Circular
Road, on which the prison fronts, Love Lane, the bank of the
Grand Canal, which runs at the rear of the prison, and a little
lane running from the Circular Road to Dolly's Bridge, which
crosses the canal close to the prison grounds. One policeman
was met sheltering himself under an elm tree on the canal bank
and another peeped out of a hallway on the Circular Road, near
Clanbrassil Street, but a little conversation enlivened by a swig
from a flask of whiskey, revealed the fact that not a single extra
man was out and that nothing startling was expected.
The men arrived on the ground by different routes in small
groups, and quietly took up positions previously assigned them.
Kelly, Ryan, Lambert and Brophy were at a point opposite the
prison wall, in a field on the other side of the Circular Road,
keeping in the shadow of a high wall running diagonally inward
from the road. Kearney, Cody, Mullen and Lawler were placed
under the shadow of a hedge at the gate of the same field, direct-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
83
ly opposite the prison gate. Harrison, Duggan and O'Neill were
in a little dark nook at the western end of the prison wall be-
tween the latter and the wall of a cabbage garden that lay be-
tween the Circular Road and the canal. Flood had been sent
home because we had no revolver for him. He offered to stay,
but Kelly wanted no man without a weapon. The nook was partly
overhung by the branches of trees. My instructions were to move
from post to post, reporting at intervals to Colonel Kelly till
the time fixed for the escape, when I was to take my place with
him. A low mud wall separated the field from the Circular Road,
and in a hole on the inside of this wall John Ryan had, earlier
in the night, deposited a coil of stout rope with knots arranged
at about every two feet of its length, so as to make it easier for
Stephens to climb by when it was flung over the wall.
Here the men waited expectantly in the drizzling rain for the
signal which was to tell them that Stephens had been let out of
the prison and was waiting inside the outer wall for the rope
to be thrown over. He was to throw gravel over the wall as a
signal that the rope was wanted, and the "quack, quack!" of a
duck repeated by Ryan was to announce that the moment was
at hand. But there was a genuine duck in a neighboring garden
that raised a false alarm once.
When the prison clock struck one Breslin left his quarters in
the hospital and quietly opened the door leading to the corridor
where Stephens' cell was situated. No one else was up but Byrne,
and Stephens who was waiting in his cell dressed and ready to
move. Ascending the stairs noiselessly, Breslin opened the two
doors leading into the corridor as quietly as he could, but it was
impossible to do so without making a slight noise. The police-
man on the other side of the door at the other end might hear
if he was listening, and if McLeod was awake, there would be
trouble. Stephens heard Breslin turn the key in the cell door.
He slid from the hammock where he had been lying dressed. No
superfluous words were spoken. Stephens, after receiving a
loaded revolver from Breslin, followed the latter as noiselessly
as possible out of the corridor and down the stairs. Here an anx-
ious pause of a few moments was made. If McLeod, the jailbird,
rang his gong, all was over; but no sound came from his cell.
He afterwards explained his silence by saying that the key
which let Stephens out of his cell would also open his, and that
had he given the alarm his throat would have been cut. Hear-
ing no alarm, Breslin opened the door leading out into the prison
yard. Between this yard and the Governor's garden was a very
high wall, which had to be crossed before the outer wall could be
reached. Breslin had been told by Byrne that the ladder used
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
in lighting the lamps in the yard was long enough to enable a
man to cross the wall, but on making the experiment now he
found that a tall man standing on the top rung of the ladder
could not reach within several feet of the top of the wall. Byrne
had not tried the ladder, as he had promised to do. This was a
serious hitch. McLeod might have rung his gong and alarmed
the prison without Breslin being able to hear it, and not a mo-
ment could be spared. After a hurried consultation he decided
to return to the prison, and, with Byrne's help, bring out two
long tables from the lunatics' dining room, on which to place the
ladder. There was an unoccupied sentry box close to where they
stood, and inside this he placed Stephens. For all he knew,
there might be a policeman stationed in the Governor's garden;
so, assuring Stephens that Byrne and he would take care of any-
thing between the sentry box and the prison door, he told him
to shoot any man coming from the other direction.
The two tables were carried out as quickly as possible, and
placed one on top of the other against the wall at a point where
Breslin knew there was a tool shed on the other side, which
would facilitate the descent. The ladder was then placed on the
upper table and held by Byrne and Breslin, while Stephens
ascended.
As Stephens stepped on the ladder he turned round and
handed Breslin the revolver. This left an unfavorable impres-
sion on Breslin which nothing could efface. If there should be a
policeman in the Governor's garden he could easily stop the fur-
ther progress of the fugitive, and the men outside the wall could
do nothing to aid him. Stephens climbed up the ladder, and,
although there was some glass on the top of the wall, easily got
over it, and dropped down to a shed on the other side and thence
to the ground. He walked over to a pear tree indicated by Bres-
lin, which grew close to the outer wall, and which would aid him
in climbing it. Hearing no footsteps outside, he took a handful
of gravel and flung it on to the Circular Road.
This signal was at once recognized. It was only the work of
a minute for the little party with Kelly to cross the road and
fling one end of the rope over the wall. Four of us held it, and
in a second there was a strong tug at the other end of the
rope and we felt him struggling upward, till at last we saw his
head and shoulders at the top of the wall, which was about
eighteen feet high. The whole party, as well as I can remember,
had by this time rushed to the spot, and "The Captain" was
greeted good-naturedly, but in subdued tones. He peered down
as if gauging the distance to the ground, and was quite out of
breath. After he had vainly tried to hitch the rope between
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
85
two stones on the top of the wall so that he might use it in
descending, John Ryan told him to drop down with his back to
the wall, and we would catch him. He did so and Ryan caught
his feet on his chest, the sand on the soles leaving the imprint
of the shoes on Ryan's buttoned coat. It staggered Ryan, and
as Stephens was coming down I caught him about the knees and
let him slide to the ground. I felt him tremble as I let him
down, a fact probably caused as much by his physical exertion
as by the reaction to the nerve-wracking strain of his enforced
wait in the sentry box in the inner yard. At all events, it gave
the first shock to the belief I had previously entertained in his
coolness and self-possession.
Stephens and Kelly at once crossed the Circular Road and
turned into Love Lane, a long winding street, running through
market gardens and having few houses. From Love Lane they
turned into Brown Street. In this street was the house where the
C. O. I. R. was to be concealed. Mrs. Boland, a sister of James
O'Connor, later Member of Parliament for West Wicklow, had
undertaken to shelter him, and John O'Connor, her brother, then
a bright boy of fifteen, who had acted as messenger between
Kelly and Stephens before his arrest, was on the lookout. Here
he remained in safety, and ever afterwards we used to call Mrs.
Boland "the best man of the O'Connor family". She was one of
the most devoted of the many good women of the Fenian move-
ment.
I had been ordered by Kelly to see that anything that might
give a clue to the nature of the escape should be removed from
outside the wall. The only thing of that kind was the rope, and
I found unexpected difficulty with that. Every man present
wanted to get a piece of it, and a few succeeded.
We started off in small groups, and the state of elation in
which the men all were was indicated by a remark by John
Ryan, who was walking with me. "John," he said, "we have
tonight witnessed the greatest event in history." "Well," I re-
plied, "I suppose it is the greatest in our little movement up to
the present, but I hope we'll best it soon."
As we got to a point on the Circular Road opposite the prison
gate we heard the loud bang of a door, and we thought the alarm
must have been given and expected momentarily to see the gate
open and the policemen rush out. Lest such event might result
in the recapture of Stephens, the men all ran up, every man
pulled his revolver, and we waited expectantly, but there was not
another sound or a sign. We then separated and went our
various ways. Breslin and Byrne said later that they had neither
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
banged a door nor heard any noise, but twelve of us outside heard
it so distinctly that there could be no mistake about it.
A few minutes later I learned how much the matter had
become practically public property. As Ryan and I turned into
Camden Street he said to me, "I promised Sam Clampett that I
would call and let him know the thing has come off all right.
He lives just here." I knew Sam, who was a Protestant and a
member of James O'Connor's Circle. He was a bright, handsome
little fellow. Sure enough, his wife and he were waiting up to
hear the news. She too was, of course, a Protestant, and a great
Fenian. They welcomed us effusively and a bottle of whiskey
was produced. The three men drank "The Captain's" health in
a bumper. Ryan and I were wet from long exposure to the
drizzle and the draught was timely.
Breslin left the tables and the ladder as they stood when
Stephens crossed the inner wall, and the false keys in the door,
so that there might be no mistake about the manner of the
escape, and returned to his room in the hospital, which he
reached a little after 2 o'clock. He wore a pair of patent leather
shoes, so that his ordinary ones might not be soiled, and after
carefully wiping the sand and dust from them he put them
away, and brushing his clothes, got into bed and pretended to
be "fast asleep" immediately. Byrne continued to make his usual
rounds, but not until 4 o'clock did he raise the alarm and report
finding the tables and ladder against the prison wall.
A scene of wild confusion ensued. The whole prison staff was
aroused, and every nook and corner of the building and the
grounds was searched for the fugitive. The Castle authorities
were at once notified, and in a few hours the police were scouring
the city, searching houses and watching trains and outgoing
vessels of all kinds. The garrison was placed under arms. Simi-
lar precautions were taken elsewhere and an utter panic pre-
vailed among the Loyalists. Landlords and magistrates were
paralyzed with dismay, and fully expected the outbreak of a
formidable insurrection.
I stopped that morning at the house of my aunt in Mabbot
Street. Her husband, William Delaney, was in the building busi-
ness in a small way, and the yard, which was full of building
material, had a door opening on a lane which ran into Talbot
Street. I had the key of this door buried in sand so that I could
reach it from the outside and the back door of the house had
been left open for me. Here I had arranged that O'Neill should
also sleep that morning and he was waiting for me in the lane
when I got over. Thinking that we might have been followed,
he insisted on sleeping in his clothes, and he presented a curious
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
87
spectacle as he slept. He had a portion of the rope coiled around
his body and four loaded revolvers — he had collected three be-
sides his own — in his belt. I had two others, but, though I
slept in my clothes, I kept the firearms within reach.
We were anxious to learn how the people felt about the news,
so we were up early, got the papers, reported for orders to Colonel
Kelly, returned the borrowed revolvers and visited several places
frequented by our men. We found them all in high spirits and
everyone talking of the event. At Lynch's in Camden Street, the
place we had started from, there was a large party of our friends
and several men who were not Fenians, but all were equally
enthusiastic.
Had Stephens been ready to give the word then he could
have got five followers for the one that would have answered his
call at any previous time.
The people were wild with delight. Men who had till then
looked with open hostility or cold indifference on Fenianism were
seized with a sudden enthusiasm. They shook hands with their
Fenian acquaintances in the streets, and congratulated them on
the victory. It was the one proud day of the Fenian movement.
The Government had been beaten in their own stronghold, and
not a man ever suffered the loss of a hair.
Byrne was arrested next day and committed for trial, but
two successive juries disagreed, and he was finally released and
allowed to leave the country. Not a shadow of suspicion rested
on Breslin, and he remained at his post for a whole year, when,
finding that he was likely to be arrested, he quietly slipped on
board the Holyhead boat at "Kingstown", and was in Paris the
following night. Neither Breslin nor Byrne contracted for or
ever received a single penny for the work. It was a labor of love.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE FIGHT POSTPONED.
"The Year of Action" Passed Without a Rising, Contrary to
Advice of the American Officers — Centres Called into Con-
sultation Not to Make a Decision but to Acquiesce in the
Postponement Already Determined on by Stephens — Split
in the American Fenian Brotherhood a Big Factor.
The trials of the prisoners first arrested — O'Leary, Luby,
Kickham, O'Donovan Rossa, Mulcahy, Roantree, O'Connor and
others in Dublin, and Kenealy, Keane and their fellows in Cork
(September, 1865, to January 1866) — by which the English Gov-
ernment hoped to intimidate the Fenians, had the very opposite
effect. They put the men on their mettle, stimulated recruiting
and aroused the sympathy of the people. Thousands of new
members were sworn in, many of them belonging to the com-
mercial and professional classes, who had hitherto held aloof,
and large masses of men who had not been reached by our work-
ers were favorably influenced by the public propaganda. It is
always so in Ireland when England undertakes coercive measures.
Repression is the best possible stimulant for Irish Nationalism.
It was the same with the soldiers as with the people. The
reports of the trials filled the newspapers and were the chief
topic of conversation everywhere, including the barrooms visited
by soldiers, and the swearing in of new members went on more
briskly than at any previous time. The military organizers were
kept busy. It was only during January that the military authori-
ties seemed to awake to the fact that there was a formidable
Fenian organization in the ranks of the army. One infantry
Colonel seemed to guess it all along, but he made a joke of it.
He was an Irishman who had been shabbily treated by the heads
of the army and undoubtedly had a grievance. The story told
by the men of his regiment was that during the great Mutiny in
India, when all the superior officers of his regiment had been
killed or wounded, he had not alone led it during a hard cam-
paign, but had commanded a large body of native troops as well.
At the end of the Mutiny, they stated, when the regiment was
ordered home, he fell sick and it was taken to England by an offi-
cer of lower rank, a man of no ability, who belonged to an influ-
ential, aristocratic family. They said it was a custom in the army
that the man who took a regiment home from India was always
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
89
promoted, so the aristocratic nincompoop was made a General
and the man who had rendered brilliant service at a critical time
was still only a Colonel in 1865, and very much disgruntled.
I had no means of verifying this story, but the men of the
regiment all believed it and found confirmation of his supposed
sympathy with Fenianism in his treatment of men brought be-
fore him for being absent from roll-call or other similar delin-
quencies. "Ha! What brings you here? I suppose you were
out with the boys last night," they represented him as saying, in
a bantering tone. "Get to hell out of here and don't be brought
up before me again."
The Colonel's brother was a well known parish priest in Wick-
low, and was very patriotic. The Centre of the regiment, an ex-
ceptionally intelligent man, was quite confident that if we made
a good showing when the fight came, his Colonel would come over.
None of his regiment would be left anyhow, for they were Fenians
almost to a man.
There was a similar belief about a Captain of the Fourth
Dragoon Guards and a Lieutenant of the Eighteenth Royal
Irish, but I knew no more about them than I did of the Colonel.
Stephens claimed to have sworn in six commissioned officers of
the army, but he never named them, even to O'Leary, Luby or
Kickham, as they told me later, and the matter remained a
mystery to the end.
The English Government became more active early in 1866;
arrests on suspicion became more frequent, and at last on Febru-
ary 17, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. Dublin Castle did
not wait for the formal suspension, but commenced to make ar-
rests by wholesale as soon as the Bill was introduced in Parlia-
ment. The O'Donoghue, a grand-nephew of Daniel O'Connell,
made a rather good speech against it, and John Bright made
another, but no obstructive tactics were used. The Bill was
passed in both houses on the same day it was introduced, and
signed by Queen Victoria that evening. The purpose of the Gov-
ernment was evidently to arrest as many men as possible before
they had time to seek places of safety, so the whole police force
was put on the job and worked overtime, both in Dublin and the
Provinces. Several hundred prisoners had been gathered in
by the time the proclamation announcing the suspension was
published on Sunday, February 18.
Up to the end of 1865, every man had worked in the belief that
the fight would come off that year. Stephens had made the an-
nouncement in 1864, on his return from America, and he had
repeated it many times in 1865. "This year — and let there be
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
no mistake about it — will be the year of action," he wrote in a
letter which was captured and read at the trials of the prison-
ers first arrested. And he kept it up to the very end of the year.
Then, when the men were keyed up to the highest pitch of en-
thusiasm and expectancy there came a sudden change. The fight
was postponed, but, although Stephens was entirely responsible
for it, he adroitly placed the responsibility on other shoulders.
He was certainly in a most difficult position, not so much on
account of the action of the British Government and the arrest
of his chief lieutenants as because of the Split in the American
organization which came at the height of the crisis in Ireland.
The Split was beyond all doubt the chief cause of the failure
of Fenianism in Ireland, but it would not necessarily have had
that effect if Stephens had been a more resourceful man, cap-
able of making proper use of the means at his command in Ire-
land. The Split delivered a large part of the resources originally
intended to arm the men in Ireland to the project of invading
Canada; it cut off the supply of American officers and left the
work of supporting the Home Organization in the hands of that
portion of the American body which was least efficient and
capable. Its moral effect on Stephens was very bad and it made
him commit the worst blunder of his whole career. Overrating
his popularity in America, and throwing all prudence to the
winds, he wrote a letter to O'Mahony, which he evidently ex-
pected would leave the Head Centre's opponents without a fol-
lowing, but which had the very opposite effect. It widened the
breach and made it irreparable. The prompt publishing of the
letter by O'Mahony rendered it morally impossible for the Sen-
ate wing of the American movement to support the Home Or-
ganization so long as Stephens remained its leader.
"Lash them from you like so many dogs", he wrote to John
O'Mahony, forgetting that a gross personal affront is never really
forgiven by men of spirit anywhere and least of all by Irishmen.
What had been only a difference over O'Mahony's management
of the movement in America and a contest for control was at
once turned into a bitter personal quarrel, and all hope of union
among American Irishmen for the overthrow of British rule in
Ireland was gone. It was a fair test of Stephens' capacity for
leadership — the first real test — and it found him wanting. He
probably wrote the letter in the first flush of anger over the news
of the Split, without giving himself time to think of the conse-
quences. He had been depending entirely on America for a sup-
ply of arms, ignoring the fact that there were over 100,000 British
rifles in Ireland, stored in four different depots, the capture of
one of which would be quite easy for a small body of trained men,
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
91
properly armed and led, and that the fall of two out of the other
three would almost certainly follow.
Stephens' disappointment over the failure of his ill-consid-
ered effort to end the Split undoubtedly depressed him, upset
all his plans and paralyzed his energies. Less than half a dozen
men saw him at any time during the month following his escape
from prison in November and we had no means of knowing how
he felt. Colonel Kelly, his Chief of Staff, was a man of untiring
energy, full of optimism and of a buoyant spirit, and our orders
were received from him. He saw or heard from Stephens every
day, and if he knew that the Chief Organizer had lost heart he
gave no hint of it. Up to the last week in December Kelly's orders
all indicated a fight at an early day. We were to "keep the steam
up" — that was his phrase — and have our men ready for action at
a moment's notice. Then suddenly he announced that "The
Captain" wanted to see the Dublin Centres, and we naturally
thought it was for the purpose of issuing final orders for the
insurrection.
It was not to be a meeting, but the men were to be brought to
Kelly's lodgings in Grantham Street in groups of not more than
two or three, each group retiring as soon as "The Captain's"
business with them was transacted, to make room for another.
It was explained that this method was adopted to avoid attract-
ing attention, but I soon made up my mind that it had another
object — to prevent the possibility of discussion and a vote. The
hour fixed for the first batch to arrive was about 8 o'clock in
the evening and each group was timed so that there would be
very little chance of many men being there together. There was
naturally some over-lapping, some of the squads arriving while
those who preceded them were still in the room, but the whole
proceeding went off without a hitch until nearly all the men had
been seen. But all were not seen.
Along with Stephens were the members of the Military Council,
except General Millen, who had been ordered to America. They
were Colonel Michael Kerwin, Colonel William G. Halpin, Colonel
Denis F. Burke, Colonel Thomas J. Kelly, and Captain Doherty
whose initials I have forgotten. The procedure, I learned from
some of the men after they had come out, was this:
Stephens explained that he had been disappointed in his
expectations from America. The Split had interrupted the supply
of money on which he depended to obtain sufficient arms. He
had sent messages to America which he hoped would result in
bringing about better conditions, and a delay of three weeks or a
month would be necessary. If at the end of that time things in
America did not turn out all right, the fight would come off with-
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out American help. What he wanted to know from each Centre
was, could he hold his men together for three or four weeks and
keep them in condition to fight at the end of that time?
His description of the situation suggested the answer to the
question, and the tone in which he spoke made the question an
appeal. It was practically a request for approval of something
he had already decided upon. He had never done anything like
this before with the Centres; he had always issued orders, but
never in a peremptory way. His reference to the difficulties
created by the Split in America had a strong effect on most of
the men and his promise to fight without American help, if
necessary, stirred their fighting spirit. So they all gave him the
promise he asked, but some of them with evident reluctance.
Matthew O'Neill looked very much disgusted when the question
was put to him and answered in a sulky tone: "I suppose I
must."
Stephens asked him what he meant and O'Neill replied: "Be-
cause I know you wouldn't ask me if you hadn't already made
up your mind and intended to make me."
Stephens was a little disconcerted at this, but assured O'Neill
that he need not have any fear on account of the short postpone-
ment; the fight would come off all right.
But the American officers present did not share his optimism;
they knew conditions in the United States too well to justify
them in expecting any favorable result from Stephens' efforts
to heal the breach between the two warring factions. They knew
exactly what could be done in Ireland and did not believe that
conditions would be improved by a delay of three or four weeks.
Arrests of men in various parts of the country were on the in-
crease and might be expected to take place on a much larger
scale as time went on. All the American officers then in Ireland
or England — over 150 — were still at large, but could not expect
immunity from arrest to continue much longer. A few officers
had been already called back to America by the opponents of
O'Mahony and had obeyed the summons. The hope of a success-
ful fight depended on the men being led by competent officers,
and there were nearly as many in Ireland then as Owen Roe
O'Neill had brought from Spain to lead the fight against Monroe
and Cromwell. The disaffected regiments were still in Ireland
and not a single Fenian soldier had been arrested. Among them
were many very intelligent sergeants who were fit for officers,
and 8,000 red-coated Fenians would form a fine backbone for an
insurgent Irish army. And there were thousands of other un-
sworn Irishmen in the English garrisons throughout Ireland
whose sympathy could, for the most part, be relied on. There
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
93
were not enough of arms, but the supply would be likely to
diminish, rather than increase, with the delay, as seizures were
beginning to be made. There were certainly enough on hand
to capture one of the Government arsenals.
This situation was put plainly before Stephens by the Ameri-
can officers that evening before any of the Centres had arrived,
but a few of the latter got in while the discussion was going on
and heard Kerwin and Halpin plead earnestly with Stephens for
an immediate fight. Colonel Kerwin, who was evidently very
much worked up, assured him that the Military Council would
take full responsibility for the decision and pleaded earnestly
with Stephens against any postponement. Stephens listened
with apparent deference to what the officers had to say, but did
not indicate whether he would accede to their wishes or not,
merely saying that the men themselves would decide. Of course,
the men did not decide anything; they merely did what Stephens
asked them to do. The military officers remained during the
interviews between Stephens and the groups of Centres, but did
not interfere in the talk after they had made their plea.
I had been assigned to guard duty that night by Colonel Kelly.
My orders were to select a few men, not more than five, who
could be absolutely relied on to protect the house from intrusion
and "The Captain" from arrest. I selected five men all of whom
were well fitted for the work and all were armed with good
American revolvers. I stationed them at various points around
the block in which the house was situated, within supporting
distance of each other, and I took up my post near the house.
Kelly instructed me to walk past from time to time and give
signals which he would hear inside. If everything was all right
I was to rattle once on the railings in front of the house with my
stick; if there was anything suspicious I was to rattle twice as
a warning, and if there was danger I was to do it three times
very loudly and call up my men to see that "the Old Man" (as
Stephens was called by some) got off safe. I was to be the last
man brought in to see him and was to speak for the soldiers.
We had a man named Michael Graham, an ex-letter carrier,
who was the organization's detective, and he knew every member
of the "G" Division in Dublin, all the Police Inspectors and most
of the sergeants. Mick, as we all called him, was a splendid
sleuth, and he was also on duty in that capacity that night.
As Edmund O'Donovan, son of the great Gaelic scholar, came
up towards the house after 9 o'clock, he informed me that he had
noticed two men whom he believed to be detectives lounging
around the corner of a neighboring street. He was not sure they
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
were after us, but suggested that it would be well to take pre-
cautions. I immediately sent Graham to take a look at the de-
tectives, gave the two rattles on the railing as a warning, gathered
my men in the immediate vicinity of the house, left them on
guard, and with O'Donovan proceeded towards the place where
the suspects were. When we reached the next corner to the west-
ward we met Graham coming back and he assured us there
was no danger. The two detectives were well known to him and
they were assigned to purely civic duties in the neighborhood.
O'Donovan went into the house, explained the situation out-
side, and assured Stephens that there was no danger. He found
"The Captain" with his overcoat on, all ready to go, and without
waiting to hear what the young Centre for Trinity College had to
say on the question of postponement, or waiting to see a few
others who had not yet arrived, he took his departure, accom-
panied by Kelly. He was really in no more danger there than
at any hour of the twenty-four anywhere else, but he made up
his mind to take no chances and broke up the consultation
before it was finished. He had been but a few weeks out of
prison and the thought of being incarcerated again made him
very careful.
But there was unquestionably another consideration which
outweighed everything else with Stephens. There was never any
question in the minds of those who knew him best that he be-
lieved he was absolutely necessary to the success of the move-
ment; that his permanent removal would surely bring failure,
and that, therefore, he was acting in the best interests of the
cause by taking every precaution against the possibility of arrest.
I have never met a man in all my life who believed so thoroughly
in himself, or who so confidently took it for granted that others
shared that belief. It was an obsession with him. And, like all
such men, his overweening confidence in himself and his constant
self-assertion made a deep impression on nearly all those asso-
ciated with him. The wonderful work he had done in building up
a magnificent organization while the failure of the Young Ireland
movement, the horror of the great Famine and the betrayal of
the Tenant League by Sadleir and Keogh, were still fresh in the
people's minds and apathy and depression reigned everywhere,
seemed in a measure to justify this. He had created the organi-
zation, made it what it was, put the impress of his own person-
ality upon it and given it its defects, as well as its good qualities.
Its chief defect, and the one that in the end proved disastrous,
was that Stephens was the sole arbiter in deciding the course
which it should pursue. This situation he had deliberately cre-
ated, in the full belief that he was doing the best for Ireland.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
95
There was nobody in existence entitled to take the place of
Stephens, to share authority with him in arriving at important
decisions, or to offer him advice, after the arrest of O'Leary,
Luby and Kickham, whom he had constituted a sort of execu-
tive council. Every officer in the organization derived his author-
ity from the C. O. I. R. The organization began at the top and
was the most completely despotic system in the world. There
was no intermediate authority between Stephens and the hun-
dreds of Centres whom he had appointed, and on his removal
they became a set of disjointed units, with no provision made
for replacing the central authority.
There was, however, a very general understanding that the
Centres represented their men, had authority to speak for them,
and that when they spoke, the Chief Executive should respect
their wishes.
After he had consulted the Dublin Centres in the imperfect
manner above described, he did the same with the country
Centres, or as many of them as he could get up to Dublin at
short notice. There was no means of ascertaining whether all
of them were notified or not, but it is very probable they were.
The number who responded was very large; probably they were a
majority. But all of them certainly accepted the result when
notified of it, as they all undoubtedly were, within a few days.
The plan followed with the country Centres was the same as
in the case of the Dublin men, except that it began earlier in the
day. I heard of it at the time from some of those present, and
later in America. The men were brought in small groups to the
City Mansion Hotel in Bridge Street, where they met Stephens
and Kelly in one of the rooms. There were often three or four
groups present at the same time, but they kept coming and
going, as at Kelly's in Grantham Street. There was no discus-
sion, but a good deal more general talk than at the other gath-
ering, because most of the men had not seen Stephens for a
long time, and some of them had never met him before. He put
the same question to the men that he had asked in Grantham
Street, but added that the Dublin Centres had already agreed
to do what he asked. Thus reinforced, somewhat unfairly, he
had no difficulty in getting all the country Centres to do what
he wanted, and they returned to their homes delighted at their
experience. They had met, almost under the very windows of
Dublin Castle, the man who had been rescued from the clutches
of the British Government after he had defied it in the dock,
and who, in spite of the utmost efforts of its officials and the
offer of a big reward for his capture, still remained in Dublin to
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
give the signal for an uprising. When they got home they spread
the news and it inspired confidence among their men.
Thus was secured the first postponement of the fight that was
to have taken place in 1865. While there were undoubtedly im-
portant political considerations involved, the chief question was
most certainly a military one, and it was decided by a civilian
against the judgment and advice of his military advisers. For it
was certainly Stephens who decided it. Had all the Centres been
present at the same time, a discussion could not have been
avoided and probably a vote would have been taken. Consider-
ing the confident spirit then prevailing, I think it would have put
Stephens' persuasive powers to a severe test — and he was not an
orator — to prevent a vote in favor of fighting at once.
In 1797, civilians decided a military question, but in the case
of the United Irishmen the men who made the decision were
civilians of first-class ability, while the military men whose offer
to deliver up Dublin Castle they rejected were only sergeants of
militia. In the case of Stephens it was one man who had re-
ceived no military training whatever who overrode the judgment
of five soldiers who, it is true, had not received a scientific mili-
tary education, but had seen hard service for four years and as
commissioned officers in one of the great wars of history. Colonel
Halpin had commanded a Kentucky regiment; Colonel Burke was
commander of one of the regiments of Meagher's Brigade; Colonel
Kelly, with the rank of Captain, was on the staff of General
Thomas up to the Battle of Missionary Ridge; and Captain
Doherty was on the staff of General Owen, but I am not familiar
with his record. But Colonel Kerwin, who pleaded hardest for
fight and offered to share, with his colleagues, the full responsi-
bility for ordering it, was an officer with an exceptionally distin-
guished record. A Colonel of cavalry who had won his promotion
by gallantry in action, he was selected by General Grant in the
closing days of the Civil War for a particularly difficult service,
which he performed with great skill and judgment. At the head
of a body of cavalry Grant sent him from Virginia down through
North Carolina, where the population was all hostile, to open
communication with Sherman, who had successfully completed
his march "from Atlanta to the Sea" and was then heading
north to effect a junction with the Army of the Potomac. He
performed his work to Grant's entire satisfaction and was com-
plimented for the service. The judgment of such a man on the
question of fighting or not fighting ought to have decided it,
especially when backed by all his colleagues on the Military
Council.
But one of Stephens' hobbies was that he was a military
RECOLLECTIONS OP AN IRISH REBEL
97
genius. His only military experience was in facing British soldiers
once in 1848, when a fight seemed imminent at Killenaule, County
Tipperary, taking a creditable part, under William Smith O'Brien,
in the skirmish with the police at Ballingarry, and in actual
fighting at the barricades in Paris in 1851. Stephens was very
proud of his participation in the Paris affair, and thought it
qualified him to pronounce judgment on military questions. This
was unfortunate for Ireland.
CHAPTER XV.
THE COUNCIL OF WAR.
Arrests by British on Large Scale Continued — Soldiers at
Richmond Threatened to Seize Barracks and Start Fight —
The Situation Reviewed in Conference With Stephens on
Night of February 20, 1866.
During the fortnight or three weeks following the suspension
of the Habeas Corpus Act (February 17) Dublin presented a curi-
ous spectacle. I saw only five days of it outside, but witnessed
the effects of it in Mountjoy Prison in the shape of new batches
of arrested men coming in daily. As I knew very many of them
and we were able to talk in spite of the prohibition, I was very
well informed of what was going on outside.
Large bodies of police, accompanied by detectives, moved about
the city, searching suspected residences, hotels, lodging houses and
taprooms and making arrests. The arrests were made by the de-
tectives and the uniformed policemen served chiefly as escorts.
As several of the latter were members of the organization and
a large number of others were sympathizers, they sent many
timely warnings, which enabled some men to escape arrest. Many
went over to England and some to America, but the great ma-
jority remained in Dublin, taking refuge with friends or sleeping
in lodging houses, changing to a different one every night. The
strength of the arresting party precluded the possibility of re-
sistance in most cases, but a few men fought their way to liberty
and were never captured. If Stephens had not some time pre-
viously ordered all revolvers to be given up and placed in small
depots, except in the case of special men who needed them, the
resistance would have been very general and the police would
have had to pay a heavy toll. Some of the most obnoxious de-
tectives who had been watching the Fenians for more than a
year and knew many of them by sight would certainly have been
shot. This would, of course, have led to the calling out of the
troops and in the then state of feeling in the garrison a fight
in the streets of the city on a large scale might have been precipi-
tated and many hundreds of soldiers would have deserted. The
result would have been bloody, but could not possibly have been
more disastrous to Fenianism than the almost bloodless Rising of
March 5, 1867, — a year later.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
99
All the American officers in Dublin, except twelve, were ar-
rested within two days after the first big swoop of the police.
Among them were Kerwin, Denis F. Burke and Byron. Most of
them had been shadowed for some time and their lodgings located,
so there was no difficulty in finding them. The two best men in
the Dublin garrison, John Boyle O'Reilly and Patrick Keating of
the Fifth Dragoon Guards, had been locked up before the Sus-
pension and three or four of the most reliable among the desert-
ers were caught in the lodging house raids. Both civilians and
soldiers were in a state of excitement and many were clamoring
for action.
Word was brought to me on Monday, February 19, that the
men of the Sixty-first and Sixtieth Rifles in Richmond Barracks,
where our men were in the majority, were getting out of hand
and were threatening to seize the barracks and start the fight at
once. This message reached me while in a back room of a public
house owned by a friend at the corner of Camden Street and
the Long Lane, where Colonel Kelly was holding a consultation
with me. There were enough of our men there and in the imme-
diate neighborhood to take care of any body of police who might
come, so Stephens' ch^ef lieutenant was comparatively safe from
arrest.
Kelly told me I must prevent any premature movement of that
kind at all hazards, so I determined to see the impatient men,
even if it should be necessary to go into the barracks. In another
room were William Curry, Centre of the Eighty-seventh, in
civilian's clothes, and Fennessy of the Third Buffs, in uniform
and with a furlough in his pocket. Fennessy and I were about
the same size and build, and the buff facings of the Third could
hardly be distinguished at night from the white ones of the Sixty-
first. So I put on Fennessy's uniform and he my clothes, and
Curry, with a borrowed scissors, cut the beard off my chin (not
then very much) so as to give me the regulation British side
whiskers and mustache. Fennessy's shoes were too large for me,
so I kept my elastic boots, which were wholly unmilitary, but
would hardly be noticed in the night. As I had only been four
years out of the Foreign Legion and had been frequently drilling
during the intervening time my appearance was not likely to at-
tract attention.
I took an outside car, drove to Thomas Street and walked to
James's Street, where I visited a number of public houses fre-
quented by soldiers, getting closer to Richmond as I went along.
I met a number of the Sixty-first, and was assured that the talk of
immediate fight was confined to a few hotheads, but was still
a little dangerous. They said it would not be necessary to go into
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
the barracks, but if I insisted I could go in among a group of
them and escape notice. There would be no difficulty in getting
out, with the furlough and the forage cap of the Third Buffs, and,
besides, the guard at the gate that night were nearly all our
own men. They advised me, however, to walk around near the
gate, where I could see a number of the men as they returned
to barracks, and they would warn them to be on the lookout
for me. This I did and I saw more than fifty of the men of
the Sixty-first and a few of the Rifles and arranged with them
that they would pass the word to keep quiet until orders for
action came. I passed the barracks gate twice, but had no
necessity to go inside.
Not a hint of this adventure reached the military authorities,
though hundreds of soldiers knew of it within twenty-four hours,
and not one of the military informers said a word about it at the
trials of the men a few months later. I returned to Camden
Street, gave his uniform and his furlough back to Fennessy, and
with five or six others, all armed with revolvers, went to a cheap
lodging house, where we all slept in the same room, which had
several small beds in it.
There were at that time between Francis Street, Patrick Street,
Nicholas Street and Bride Street, a number of short lanes which
I believe do not now exist and the names of which I do not re-
member. They contained a lot of lodging houses where a bed
could be had for four-pence. In Nicholas Street and Bride Street
were some eating houses where a meal could be had for four-
pence. It was very poor, but good enough for a healthy, hungry
man. As most of them working with me could not go home,
and Fleming's in George's Street, the Ormond on Ormond Quay
and the Ship in Lower Abbey Street, where we had been eating
alternately for some months, were all closely watched, we lived
and slept around this section for a while in perfect safety. In
the early mornings, when the detectives were sleeping off the ef-
fects of their night watch, we were often able to get a good
breakfast at Fleming's, always going in groups, so as to be ready
to resist arrest. Having nothing to do during the daytime and
no place to stop, we spent much of the time walking the streets,
keeping within supporting distance of each other and resting
occasionally in the taproom of a friend's public house. In such
times the public street is often the safest place for a hunted
man.
About a fortnight before the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act, Stephens had sent me word that he wanted me to furnish
him about once a week with written reports of conditions in the
army. It was an utterly useless and very dangerous proceeding.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
101
I had been sending him regularly detailed reports, in a sort of
cipher, that contained all the necessary information from a mili-
tary point of view. I ruled off a sheet of foolscap with vertical
and horizontal columns, putting cipher headings at the top and
on the left hand side, which contained the numbers and location
of the regiments of infantry and cavalry and the batteries of
artillery; the strength of the guards and pickets (which were be-
ing increased as the Government became more alarmed) , with
the number of our men in each; the total number of men in each
regiment or battery and how many of these we could count on. I
knew that Kelly read these reports carefully, for he did it in my
presence, but I learned later that Stephens gave them scant at-
tention, if he even read them. What he wanted now was de-
scriptive writing about the spirit of the soldiers and anything else
which I thought might be useful to him.
I obeyed the order with great reluctance, but had only sent
him two or three of these reports when the Habeas Corpus Act
was suspended. On Tuesday, February 20, I wrote the last one —
and I intended it to be the last — under great difficulties. I had
met hundreds of the civilian members, who were so excited that
they had knocked off work, among them being several of the
Dublin Centres. They were all dissatisfied at Stephens' inac-
tion and a spirit of impatience and almost open mutiny was
growing fast. Two of them, a civilian and a military Centre, had
bluntly asked me to "pitch Stephens to the devil" and call out the
soldiers at once. I refused and pointed out the folly of such ac-
tion. I had been placed in charge of the organization in the
army by Stephens' appointment; he was my commanding officer
and theirs, and we were all bound to obey him. I was horrified
by the proposition that a subordinate should take the responsi-
bility of bringing about an insurrection against the orders of his
Chief and making a Split in Ireland that must prove still more
disastrous than the one in America. I had some trouble in dis-
suading them, but I failed to satisfy them.
I described this situation in my report, without naming the
mutinous men, and took the liberty of saying to Stephens that in
my judgment the organization could not be held together much
longer unless there was either an immediate fight or a definite
postponement which would enable the men to settle down to
work; that the suspense caused by the expectation of the fulfill-
ment of his pledge of the previous December should be ended, or
the men would be completely demoralized. I added that the writ-
ing of such reports would be impossible any longer.
I had to write that particular report in taprooms and had been
interrupted three times by police raids, of which I had been
102
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
warned in time by my vigilant lookouts to get away. The ab-
surdity of writing reports for the head of a revolutionary organi-
zation under such circumstances struck me very forcibly and I
felt it was dangerous, as well as foolish.
I sought Kelly, handed him the report, which he read, and
supplemented it verbally in answer to his questions. This was
late in the afternoon and I had a number of men to meet in
various parts of the city, which kept me so busy that I had no
chance of getting anything to eat. My last appointment was at
Parker's in George's Street, kept by Joseph Cromien, who died
some years ago in New York. There were never less than twenty
of our men in his place in the evening and often there were as
many as fifty, some of whom carried revolvers; so it would take
a strong force of police to arrest a man there. Several of our
best men were there that night and I told some of them what I
had written to "The Captain". They were all of one mind, because
they fully recognized that the tense situation could not continue.
I left Cromien's about half-past nine, went into a neighboring
shop, where I bought some spiced beef and a roll of bread, which
I ate as I walked along the street. It was my first morsel since
8 o'clock in the morning. I was going to pass the night in the
house of my aunt in Mabbot Street, Mrs. Delany, who was my
father's eldest sister and a strong sympathizer with the move-
ment. She had helped me to run away to be a French soldier.
I could always count on her help, and all her sons were members,
but the eldest and most reliable, William, who died in St. Louis,
was then in London.
I had not gone half a block when I was overtaken by a man
who informed me that Colonel Kelly wanted to see me at the
Bleeding Horse, a tavern in Camden Street, not far from the
Grand Canal. I went there direct and Kelly said: "The Old
Man wants to see you at once." We walked to the nearest car
stand, took an outside car, and Kelly told the jarvey to drive
to the north side of Stephens Green. Arrived there, he told him
to drive into Dawson Street and dismissed him about half way to
Nassau Street. We walked on until the jarvey was out of sight,
then turned back and went through a stable lane to Kildare
Street. Nearly opposite the Kildare Street Club, the headquar-
ters of Loyalism, Kelly halted and seeing that there was nobody
near, walked up the steps of a house and rang the bell. The door
was promptly opened by a stout, grey-haired lady, with a cheer-
ful, smiling face, who was evidently expecting us. She was Mrs.
Butler, a fashionable dressmaker. She shook hands warmly with
Kelly, who introduced me, and she led the way to the front room
on the second floor, where we found a party of men waiting for
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
103
us. Others came later, and when all had arrived the party con-
sisted of James Stephens, Colonel Kelly, Colonel Halpin, Edmund
O'Donovan, Mortimer Moynahan of Skibbereen, David Murphy
of Limerick, John Nolan of Carlow, and myself. Nolan had been
living in Belfast and was the Chief Organizer for Ulster, but was
then managing the civilian organization under Colonel Kelly's
directions. Mrs. Stephens was also there.
While the two ladies were present Stephens told us in a
jocular tone that Mrs. Butler would be willing to keep the Lord
Lieutenant in her house if we could capture him. Mrs. Butler
assured us that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to
hold him a prisoner in her house and that the bodyguard we
would supply would also be welcome and would want for nothing.
There could be no doubt about her sincerity in the matter. "They
would never suspect," she said laughingly, "that we'd have such
guests so near the club house across the street."
Mrs. Butler was a widow with an only daughter, Sarah Jane
Butler, who had written some good verse in the Nation, and they
had not a male relative in the organization. This was the most
striking instance I had yet met of the devotion of the women of
Ireland at that time. Mrs. Butler paid dearly for her patriotism,
for the story that she had sheltered Stephens leaked out after
the failure, and her customers, who were mostly Loyalists, de-
serted her and she died in poverty.
Mrs. Butler withdrew after this, but Mrs. Stephens remained
a considerable time and the talk went on in her presence. With
her recent experience, she was naturally very anxious for her
husband's safety. She spent much of her time looking out of
the window and said several times: "Oh, James, don't talk so
loud. They may hear you on the street." There was nobody on
the street and if there had been the voices in that room could
not be heard. Stephens told her so and at last prevailed on her
to retire.
After some general talk, Stephens turned to me and said: "I
got your letter this evening. I did not know things were so
serious, so I called a few of our friends together for consultation.
The men here know the whole country and I'll leave it to them
to decide what ought to be done." Then he said: "I wish Ned
Duffy were here." [Duffy had been arrested with Stephens and
Kickham on November 11, 1865, but had been released on bail].
Believing that the fate of the organization depended on the
decision whether the fight was to come off within the next few
days or to be put off again, and feeling very sure that Duffy would
vote for immediate action, if there was to be a vote, I immediately
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
offered to go for him. But Stephens said: "Oh, no; you'd be In
danger of arrest." I replied that I was in that danger every hour
of the twenty-four and would be in no more danger going for
Duffy than at any other time. Duffy was staying at the European
Hotel in Bolton Street, which was closely watched during the day-
time, but most of the employees there could be depended on to
give us all the help in their power. Duffy was in an advanced
stage of consumption and not expected to go out at night, so
there would probably be no detectives around at that time. Be-
sides, I was dressed like a countryman, with a heavy brown frieze
coat and, as the house was frequented by farmers and country
shopkeepers, I could probably pass in and out unnoticed, and by
breaking the journey and taking two cars, I was confident I could
bring Duffy to Mrs. Butler's house in safety. Stephens would not
hear of it, however.
I felt that Stephens feared we might be tracked to the house
and that he would be arrested, and, as I considered his safety
necessary to the organization and wished to save Mrs. Butler from
needless danger, I desisted. I have been convinced ever since that
had Duffy been there that night and the next — for he could have
remained there next day — immediate fight would have been de-
cided on.
Halpin and Kelly were the only remaining members of the
Military Council. Nolan could speak for conditions in the North,
Moynahan and Murphy for a large part of Munster, while
O'Donovan knew Clare as well as he did Dublin, and I repre-
sented the organization in the army. But Connacht had nobody
to speak for her. Duffy could do that as no other man could. He
knew every man of any account in the whole province and they
all looked up to him. Strictly speaking, no man present repre-
sented anybody and had no right to decide anything. They held
their positions by Stephens' appointment alone, and their only
right to be there was that Stephens had invited them, so that
they could give him their advice.
There was no Chairman and no regular session was held, but
Stephens was practically Chairman. As was his invariable habit,
owing probably to his lack of outdoor exercise, he walked in his
slippers about the room all the time with his hands in his
pockets, while everyone else was seated. I don't think he sat for
five minutes during the many hours we were there. There was
no smoking or drinking, and neither was there any speechmaking.
It was a very earnest discussion, but was conversational all
through the night.
The first thing that was taken stock of was the condition of
the organization, on account of the large number of arrests and
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
105
the certainty of many more. Its force was still unbroken and it
would have undoubtedly responded promptly to a call to arms —
if the arms were there. But it was found that there were only
about 2,000 rifles in the whole organization, with some thousands
of shotguns, a large number of pikes and a few hundred revolvers.
But there were plenty of Government rifles within easy reach,
and any one of three out of the four Provincial arsenals could be
taken by surprise by a small body of picked men. These were
the Pigeon House Fort (in Dublin), Athlone and Ballincollig.
Carrickfergus was out of the question until we should have a
large force in the field. So it resolved itself into a question of
arming a sufficient force to capture one of these arsenals, for
there was no scarcity of trained men.
The talk was concentrated on this subject for a long time and
the scarcity of arms was recognized as the chief difficulty.
Stephens said there were 2,000 more rifles in Liverpool [we
learned that these had been purchased by Col. Ricard Burke]
which could be brought over at once, but the active watchfulness
of the police made their safe landing very improbable unless it
was protected by a strong body of armed men. That would mean
that the fight and the landing of the rifles would have to be
simultaneous.
This brought us to the condition of the organization in the
army and the possibility of using a portion of it to strike the first
blow. It was then I learned that Stephens knew the condition
of the army only in a general way, had not read my reports and
was ignorant of the figures they contained. The sentiment that
night was all in favor of fight and I was satisfied that if a vote
had been taken it would have been for immediate action. But
it was plain to all of us that while Stephens said nothing posi-
tive, he was really in favor of another postponement. I had told
what I felt certain could be done either in Dublin or Athlone, but
Stephens wanted the exact figures of our strength in the various
regiments. I had them at my fingers' ends, but he wanted them
in writing. I offered to write them there and then, but he pre-
ferred waiting till the next night, as it was then very late and
the matter required full discussion.
Stephens informed us that he had sent Captain McCafferty on
a special mission to America and that he must have arrived in
New York by that time. O'Mahony, he said, had $125,000 in the
treasury of his wing of the Fenian Brotherhood, and he (Steph-
ens) had sent an urgent appeal that it be sent over by McCaf-
ferty at once.
But the burden of his talk was all in favor of waiting for two
or three weeks, just as he had talked of three weeks or a month
106
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
in the previous December. The sentiment was so universal in
favor of righting that he seemed loath to ask for a long post-
ponement.
At about 3 o'clock on the morning of February 21 the meeting
broke up, with an agreement that all should return at 8 o'clock
that evening. We left separately so as to avoid being noticed.
All the others could rest during the day, but Kelly and I had to
meet a number of men, beginning about 10 o'clock, so we only
got about three hours' sleep and were rather fagged out when
the meeting reconvened.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE LAST CHANCE THROWN AWAY.
Another War Conference — Plan to Capture Barracks and Eng-
lish Arms Therein Met With Favor — Paucity of Rifles in
Hands of Civilian Forces Was the Deciding Factor Against
Its Adoption — Disruption Followed.
The same eight men assembled again that Wednesday evening
at Mrs. Butler's house. Numerous arrests had been made that
day, and it was plain to us that our best men were all in danger.
Either the blow must be struck at once, or a definite postpone-
ment made that would give the wanted men a chance to get
to places of safety. Otherwise the organization would be shat-
tered in a few weeks and it would not be possible to strike later
with any hope of success. In the conversation that took place
before the regular discussion started this was freely admitted
by all.
Kelly reported on the condition of the organization, giving
particular attention to Dublin. Notwithstanding the number of
arrests made during the previous five days, the Circles in Dub-
lin were practically intact, the mettle of the men was good
and communication between officers and men perfect. An order
issued would reach them all in a few hours. The men in all the
Leinster counties would require only a few hours longer and all
Ireland could be notified of the decision inside of two days.
Where Centres or other important men had been arrested their
places had been promptly filled, according to arrangements previ-
ously made, except in a few isolated cases. It was a splendid
fighting organization, capable of quick action, if the tools to fight
with were on hand. That was the difficulty, but it was not in-
surmountable.
In Dublin, Kelly stated, the number of rifles was 800 and of
all other weapons — shotguns, revolvers and pikes — there were
about a thousand. We had certainly 8,000 men in the city, but
out of that number only 1,800 could be armed with any kind of
weapon. Several thousand other men could be brought in from
places within an hour's railroad journey of Dublin, but few of
them had arms of any kind. The two veteran officers present
had no faith in the pike, but admitted that in fighting at close
quarters in the city it would be useful. I could have added 200
to the number of rifles by a raid on the Coastguard station,
107
108
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
which was then on the Pigeon House Road, where nobody lived,
and consisted only of a well built wooden shed. The rifles were
the short Enfield and there was a sword bayonet for each. There
was also a small cannon there which was used by the Coast Guard
men for practice.
The exact figures of the strength of the garrison and the num-
ber of our men in it, which Stephens had told me on the previous
night to bring, showed that it consisted of about 6,000 men, more
than half of whom were Irish, and 1,600 belonged to the organiza-
tion. The question of attempting to capture Dublin was first taken
up, and it seemed to the military men to be a desperate chance.
But everything in revolution is desperate and we were confronted
with the alternative of doing something desperate or giving up the
hope of a fight for some time, during which many of our men
would surely be arrested and a number of our arms seized. As-
suming that the 2,000 rifles could be safely brought over from
Liverpool, we should have to face 6,000 regular soldiers with
2,800 partially trained men armed with rifles and 1,000 others
armed very indifferently, making a total of 3,800. Kelly had no
doubt of being able to get the 2,000 Liverpool rifles over in two
or three days.
Counting the 1,600 Fenians in the garrison, it would mean
4,400 men with rifles, supported by 1,000 more, imperfectly armed,
against 4,400 soldiers, of whom about 2,000 were Irishmen and
many of them in sympathy with us. If these 2,000 joined us, as
we had good reason to expect they would, it would give us 6,400
men against 2,400. But except in the case of Richmond Barracks,
where our friends were in a large majority, and in the cavalry
part of the Royal Barracks, where the Fifth Dragoon Guards
were stationed, the Fenian soldiers were mixed up with the others,
so that we could not mobilize our whole force at once. Fully 300
men of the Fifth Dragoons were ready to come out of the Royal
Barracks, after cutting the gas main, and 80 of the Tenth Hussars
from Island Bridge, all armed and mounted.
The two American officers were not enthusiastic about under-
taking an attack on Dublin under such circumstances. Neither
would any of the others if the crisis had not been reached in the
way it had been and if the destruction of the organization did not
seem imminent unless a fight took place. None of us would at
any time have contemplated an insurrection under such condi-
tions, but it seemed to some of us a question of "now or never".
We knew the Irish people better than the American officers,
who had only recently returned from the United States, where
they had been for many years. And we had by that time, on ac-
count of the Split in the Fenian Brotherhood, lost all hope of
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
109
effective help from America unless we took the field and were
able to hold out for a while.
Halpin talked a good deal of a general insurrection, if we
had sufficient arms to make a good start, and sketched out a
plan of campaign. He had had much practical experience during
the Civil War, including an occasional opportunity to take com-
mand of the Brigade of which his regiment formed a part. Of
course, in such a large army a Colonel's experience consists main-
ly in obeying orders during battles, but Kelly, being a staff officer
at the Commanding General's headquarters, had been able to see
more of the fighting and to learn why the movements were made.
As we had not the arms to start a general insurrection, this dis-
cussion, while very instructive, brought us no nearer to the solu-
tion of the question with which we were then face to face. Could
we strike a blow at the Capital, or at some other point, that would
have any chance of success, and that would if successful, remedy
our woeful lack of armament by giving us possession of a large
quantity of rifles? If we could not, then the only tning lerr iu>
us to do was to definitely postpone the fight, come out of the
battle for existence with the English Government as best we
could, and prepare for an insurrection under more favorable aus-
pices in the future.
In the presence of two such competent officers, it was hard for
very young men of no experience in war to venture to offer sug-
gestions for a plan of an uprising, but the desperate character
of the situation made three of us take courage to do so. I had
previously discussed with Edmund O'Donovan and others, two
projects that might be undertaken in such an emergency. One
of these concerned Dublin, the other Athlone, and each had for
its object the capture of 30,000 rifles, with a lot of ammunition,
equipment and military stores. So, somewhat timidly, I laid them
before the meeting.
As the two military men had shown that a simultaneous at-
tack on all the barracks and a general turnout of the men was
entirely out of the question, owing to our lack of arms, I pro-
posed to concentrate our attack on the one barrack where we
had a majority of the soldiers, bringing no men there but those
who had rifles, and if successful, then proceed to attack the others
in detail. With 900 Fenians out of the 1,550 or 1,600 men of the
Sixty-first and the Sixtieth Rifles in Richmond Barracks and a
key of the back gate facing the Grand Canal in our possession,
I was confident that we could surprise and capture it without
much difficulty. The bank of the canal back of the barrack was
closed to traffic between two bridges, was very dark on moonless
nights because it was shaded with large elm trees and there
110
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
were no lamps, and the grass was so thick and long that the
tramp of men over it would make practically no noise. The gate
had not been opened for many years, but there was a small guard
stationed inside of it.
I proposed that our riflemen should be collected on the canal
bank at an hour when the soldiers would be all in, but before
they would have gone to bed. Tom Chambers, the Centre of the
Sixty-first, then a deserter in Dublin, would pick out a small num-
ber of the best men of the regiment to remain out of barracks
and form the vanguard of the attacking party. They would
know every man of the guard and would serve as guides. With-
out giving any notice to our friends inside, so as to avoid loose
talk, excitement or chance of betrayal, the gate would be sud-
denly opened and our men would march inside, move rapidly to
the positions assigned them, make prisoners of such officers
as happened to be on duty, rally our friends to our support and
capture the Englishmen.
We could have probably captured Richmond without firing a
shot. If there was any fighting it would speedily be over. The
only thing that could have beaten us would have been the giving
of precise and definite information of the plan, which would have
only been in the possession of half a dozen men, every one of
whom has since been proved to be true.
With Richmond in our possession, reinforced by 900 Fenian
soldiers and probably several hundred others, with the balance
of the rifles to arm another contingent of our men, our next move
would naturally be on Island Bridge Barracks, which were near
at hand, where the Tenth Hussars were lying. It would there be a
contest between our 2,000 infantry and their 400 cavalrymen,
who would not be expecting attack. That would not be a serious
proposition. With Richmond and Island Bridge in our hands,
the southwestern outlets of Dublin would be open to us, in case of
defeat in the other parts of the city, and we could march out.
Next we would move on the Royal Barracks, across the King's
Bridge on the northern side of the Liffey. The problem there
would be somewhat harder, for we should have to tackle a regi-
ment of infantry, a regiment of cavalry and a battery of artillery.
But in the Eighth Foot we had 200 men and in the Fifth Dragoon
Guards, 300; and as the attacking force would be superior, the
chances would all be in our favor. Success there would add at
least 500 trained soldiers to our force.
By this time the military authorities would probably be
aroused and the future character of the fighting would depend
largely on their action. They would be taken unawares and
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
111
would be at a serious disadvantage. If they marched any large
part of the remainder of the garrison into the streets, so much
the better for us. We would seize certain houses marked on a
map by Thomas Frith, and use them as points of concentra-
tion and support. The other barracks were Ship Street, near
the Castle; Portobello; and Beggar's Bush which was nearest to
the Pigeon House Fort, where the 30,000 rifles were stored. I
forget now whether there was a small body of troops in Aldbor-
ough Barracks, on the North Circular Road, between Summer
Hill and Gloucester Street, but my recollection is that it was
occupied by Constabulary recruits. I am also in doubt as to
whether any soldiers were stationed at the Linen Hall Barracks,
on the North Side of the city, but I had exact information at
the time and laid it before the meeting. The plan also provided
for bodies of men to capture the Castle and the Pigeon House
Fort, without waiting to finish with the barracks.
The plan rather startled Halpin, to whom I had not had an
opportunity of talking on the subject, but Kelly knew of it
already. They were both more in favor of a simultaneous attack
on the Pigeon House and Richmond, if we could first land the
2,000 rifles from Liverpool, but my proposition was based orig-
inally on the arms we actually had in our possession, knowing
nothing of the Liverpool rifles until the night before. As the
matter was discussed and the possibility of the organization being
broken by the wholesale arrests was borne in on them, Kelly and
Halpin warmed to the amended project — that is, a simultaneous
attack on the Pigeon House and Richmond. But, the essential
condition under which Halpin and Kelly favored my plan for
prompt action, namely, possession by our men of the Liverpool
rifles, was not possible of immediate attainment; and, further-
more, as most of the trained American officers had been arrested
and lodged in Mount joy Prison a few days previously, the majority
of the eight men present at that meeting on the night of February
21, 1866, saw no hope for a successful start. Thus, the last chance
for a Rising in that year was thrown away, and the temporary
disruption of the movement followed.
CHAPTER XVII.
FENIANISM FIGHTING FOR ITS LIFE.
Wholesale Arrests Broke Strength of the Organization — As-
sociation of Men in Prison Resulted Favorably Later —
Women Played Important Part in Reorganization — 200,000
Irish Veterans of the American Civil War Animated with
the Spirit of Fenianism — General Miles on the Post-War
Situation.
In a few weeks the jails were filled with fully 3,000 prisoners,
and those believed to be the most important were sent up to
Dublin, where room was made for them in Mountjoy Prison, up
to then reserved for convicted men. When Mountjoy became
crowded, some were sent to Belfast and others sent to Naas. In
order to relieve the congestion, the Government after a while be-
gan to let some out on bail, thus placing them "on their good
behavior" and liable to be rearrested at any time, while others
were released on the condition of going to America. In the latter
case they were escorted to the steamer. Out of Ireland the Gov-
ernment thought they would be less dangerous, but many men
who could easily pay their passage refused to avail themselves of
the privilege, believing up to the end of the Summer that the
fight would come and preferring to take their chances in Ireland.
The men who willingly cleared out to America lost caste, but the
proportion was very small.
While the wholesale arrests did great harm and dislocated the
organization, they accomplished another purpose which the Gov-
ernment had not anticipated. The best men of the movement
in all parts of Ireland, and from England and Scotland, who had
not previously been known to one another became acquainted and
formed friendships which lasted for the rest of their lives. It
was this which prepared the way for and made possible, after the
failure of the Rising, the reorganization of Fenianism on a better
and more durable plan than the one-man rule of James Stephens.
But for the moment it broke the strength of the organization,
temporarily dislocated all communication, and created new and
serious difficulties. Connections were soon partially restored,
however, by a small band of devoted women, mostly the wives
and sisters of the leading male members, and they were efficiently
aided by the women friends of the men throughout the country.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
113
In America there was a Fenian Sisterhood, which was the
first organization of women on a large scale for political pur-
poses in the history of the world. In Ireland there was no regu-
lar organization of Fenian women, but a large number of them
worked as well as if they had been organized. They took no
pledge, but were trusted by the men without one, were the keep-
ers of important secrets, travelled from point to point bearing
important messages, and were the chief agents in keeping the
organization alive in Ireland from the time that Stephens left
for America early in 1866 until the Rising of March 5, 1867. And
not one woman betrayed a secret, proved false to the trust re-
posed in her, or by carelessness or indiscretion was responsible
for any injury to the cause. It was a fine record for Irish woman-
hood.
But while the women were not organized for purely Fenian
purposes, there was a central organization for a subsidiary object
which accomplished that end. This was the Ladies' Committee
which collected funds to provide counsel for the prisoners on
trial, fed those who were sick and did other work of a benevolent
character. The chief figures in this women's movement were
Mrs. Luby, wife of Thomas Clarke Luby (who was the Treasurer) ;
Mary O'Donovan Rossa, wife of the famous Fenian (who acted as
the Secretary) ; the Misses Ellen and Mary O'Leary, sisters of
John O'Leary; and Miss Catherine Mulcahy, sister of Dr. Denis
Dowling Mulcahy. The committee's meeting rooms were rented
from a Mrs. Shaw, both of whose daughters, Maria and Kate, were
ardent workers for the cause, although they had no Fenian
relatives. As I was a prisoner during most of the more important
activities of these ladies, I was only familiar with the earlier
part of their work. Mrs. O'Donovan Rossa summed up their pro-
gram thus: "We received orders from Headquarters and obeyed
them".
One of the moves that Stephens made in preparation for the
fight that was to have come off in 1865 was to bring a large
number of men over from England and Scotland. He sent mes-
sengers to notify all those who could afford to leave, that the
fight would surely take place before New Year's Day, 1866, and
the response was very general. Stephens and Kelly knew at the
time how many men came, but, as there was no record kept, it
is impossible to say now what the number was. There must have
been several thousand. My only means of making an estimate
was the information I received from Colonel Kelly that after the
postponement in the last week of December, 1865, over 400 of
them were put on subsistence money in Dublin alone, so that
they might remain available when the time for action came. But
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
several hundred others returned to England, promising to come
again when summoned. To prevent a large number of others
coming over, messengers had to be despatched to warn them of
the postponement. Most of the North of England men came to
Dublin; the London men went largely to Cork; but a goodly
number of Londoners were also in Dublin, while those from
Scotland mostly went to Belfast, Derry, Sligo and Galway.
Many went to their native localities and remained until all hope
of action had passed. Quite a number of these men were swept
into prison on the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, but the
majority eventually found their way back to England and Scot-
land.
These men from England and Scotland were a sturdy, stalwart
lot and many of them were trained, either in the army, the navy,
the militia, or the volunteers. They were mostly young, unmar-
ried men, who, having no family ties, having already left their
homes and being, in a sense, mobilized, were ready for immediate
action and fit for any work.
The Irish in Great Britain were at that time even more in-
tensely Irish than their fellow-countrymen who had remained
at home. They lived a life of incessant combat among a people
who hated them, and there was not a man among them who
had not had several personal encounters with insolent English-
men, while there were many instances of fights on a larger scale.
Up to that time the Irish in England had not gone very largely
into the trade unions or the Liberal clubs, in which they are so
numerous and influential to-day, and they were in the full sense
of the term in an enemy's country. This made them a very
valuable accession to the Fenian movement and their contribu-
tion to its fighting strength would have been very important if
the fight had started at the time originally fixed. What they
might have done, even in England, was shown by the Raid on
Chester Castle on February 11, 1867, which, although a failure
and started independently and prematurely by one man, not as
part of a general movement, struck terror into the heart of
England.
At many of the chief strategic points in England there were
stationed at that time Irish regiments with a fine Fenian ele-
ment, so that it was possible to strike several heavy blows in the
enemy's country that would have paralyzed the British army and
given it ample work at home while Ireland would be getting her
insurgent army into shape. When the ill-starred Rising finally
took place, none of this valuable fighting material was available
and the partially disorganized remnant of Fenianism in Ireland
could get no help from the organization in England and Scotland.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL 115
I do not say that an insurrection in 1865, or during the first
weeks of 1866, would surely have been successful. All war de-
pends on a great many things, and the element of chance counts
for much. But a fight at that time would have found Ireland in
better condition from a military point of view than she had been
in for several hundred years previously and England at a greai
disadvantage. England had underestimated Fenianism and she
was very badly prepared for such an emergency. Her army was
honeycombed with Fenianism and many things that occurred
then showed that its organization and administration were as
hopelessly deficient and inefficient as the Boer War showed them
to be thirty-five years later. Under the military leadership which
we then had and with the promise of some of the ablest Generals
in America to join us if we made a good showing, there certainly
would have been a war that would have taxed England's resources
to the utmost.
Several distinguished American Generals, both Federal and
Confederate, were openly in sympathy with Fenianism and the
whole people of the North were angry with England on account
of the undisguised help she had given to the South, while the
Confederates knew that such help as she had given their cause
was not based on any love for them, but had for its sole object
the smashing of the great Republic of the West. General Nelson
A. Miles, one of the men who won distinction in the Civil War
and who later was the ranking General of the United States
Army, wrote a series of magazine articles giving his recollections
of the great struggle, in one of which he laid strong emphasis
on this feeling against England. The article was published in
the Cosmopolitan for March, 1911, and on this subject General
Miles says:
"The end of the war found the North burdened with a
colossal debt and grave international complications looming
up. Our commerce had been swept from the seas by ships
built in British shipyards, manned by British seamen and
commissioned and officered by the Confederacy. The soil of
Canada had been used as a safe refuge and rendezvous for
conspiracies against the Government. A French army had
been landed in Mexico, which overran that territory, took
possession of its capital, and established an imperial Govern-
ment in place of the republic. Many of the strongest states-
men and ablest Generals were in favor of forming two great
armies of the veterans, composed from both the Union and
Confederate armies, and marching one to Montreal and the
other to the City of Mexico. Had this action been taken, no
one could have foretold the result, especially affecting our
territory, sea power and commerce, or the destiny of the great
Republic. It would have solved some problems that will yet
vex the American people. Our people had, however, seen so
much of war, with its horrors and devastation, that they
dreaded the thought of increased carnage and were more
anxious for peace than for all else."
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REEEL
It is impossible to believe that this project would have been
abandoned if the insurrection had broken out in Ireland at that
time — the end of 1865 or the beginning of 1866. It would, there-
fore, have in all probability brought about war between the
United States and England, which, whatever other results it
might have had, would certainly have ended in the annexation
of Canada. There would have been no difficulty in raising an
American army of 1,000,000 veterans, if that number were needed,
and England could not at that time have put 100,000 trained men
in the field. The United States had also a splendid fighting navy,
numerically inferior to the English, but much more efficient.
At least 200,000 of these veterans were Irish and the spirit
of Fenianism animated them all. One of the three great Generals
of the Union army, Philip E. Sheridan, was intensely Irish and
there is no doubt that he had placed his services at the disposal
of the Fenians on very reasonable conditions. He stipulated
that if they supplied him with 30,000 trained men, properly
armed and equipped, he would take command. While this agree-
ment referred to Canada, an invasion on such a large scale, with
a great Union General in command, would certainly have precipi-
tated war between the United States and England. And the news
of Phil Sheridan leading a Fenian army would have caused
thousands of veteran officers, from both sides of the Mason and
Dixon Line, to offer their services and the great army of which
General Miles writes would have been easily organized. England
had not then, nor has she had since, any General fit to cope with
Sheridan, that great Irish-American soldier.
But Fenianism was split into two factions in America and the
30,000 men, fully armed and equipped, could not be had, not
because they were not available, but on account of lack of money
and the paralyzing effect of the Split.
The one thing that would have instantly healed the Split and
forced both factions to unite would have been the successful
start of a fight in Ireland. Then all the money and all the arms
needed would have been forthcoming and new and competent
leadership would have been evolved.
When the first Raid on Canada took place in June, 1866, a
force of United States troops was sent to the border, under com-
mand of General Meade, to enforce neutrality. The victor of
Gettysburg was of Irish descent, sympathized with Fenianism and
shared the feeling of hostility to England that was then universal
in the Northern States. When the temporarily victorious Fenians
were obliged to retreat for lack of supplies and reinforcements,
General Meade remarked to a friend: "Well I gave them all the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
117
time they needed, if they knew their business." This was the
spirit of the whole American army at the time. The soldiers
along the border were in open sympathy with the Fenians and
ready to desert to them by wholesale.
The veterans of the Civil War in America and the Irishmen
in the British army would have provided Ireland with the finest
fighting force in all her history. The thing needed to utilize
this splendid material was a united organization, ably and wisely
led. This essential, Fenianism lacked, but that lack would have
been in part supplied if Stephens had accepted the advice of the
American officers in December, 1865. There was plenty of ability
in the organization and the fight would have brought it to the
front.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND FENIANISM.
Denounced from Almost Every Altar in Ireland Except in Two
Dioceses — Ban Put Members to a Severe Test, but Failed to
Check Movement — Begun by Cardinal Cullen and Fomented
by an English Clique in Rome.
The hardest test the Fenians had to face was the hostility of
the authorities of the Catholic Church. It was based ostensibly
on the oath, but there was overwhelming evidence that Cardinal
Cullen, who was mainly responsible for it, was opposed to the
Independence of Ireland — the object of the organization. He
would have opposed the movement, even if the oath were
dropped. He had bitterly opposed the Tenant League in the early
'Fifties, although it only sought reform of the Land Laws by
peaceful methods, and was mild compared with the Land League
of later days which was supported by Archbishop Croke of Cashel
and several other Bishops. His father, Garret Cullen, was a Kil-
dare farmer, who had been a United Irishman and a leader of
Rebels in the Insurrection of 1798. My grandfather walked
twenty miles each way to attend his funeral and men thronged
from all parts of the county to pay their last tribute of respect
to the dead Rebel. But the future Cardinal was sent to Rome
when a boy and was thirty-five years out of Ireland. He was in
Rome in 1848, when he developed a horror of Revolutionists and
never could get over the idea that the Fenians were allied with
the Carbonari. There was no basis whatever for the theory, but
he assumed that there was and acted on the assumption that it
was an undeniable fact. The Fenians had no connection what-
ever with any movement outside of Ireland except the Fenian
Brotherhood in America, which was composed entirely of Irish-
men and had only one object, the Independence of Ireland.
Dr. Cullen based his assumption of an alliance with the Car-
bonari on the fact that James Stephens while a refugee in Paris
had fought at the barricades in the Red resistance to Louis
Napoleon's Coup d'etat in 1851, and claimed that he was an
enrolled member of the Communist Party. Even if he were, he
never tried to convert the Fenians to Communism, and his chief
lieutenants, O'Leary, Luby and Kickham, wore most conservative
men. But the Cardinal stuck to his theory to the last and waged
unrelenting war on the organization.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
119
The oath was wholly unnecessary and did not prevent men
from turning informer, while it kept many good Nationalists from
joining the organization. In America there was no oath, only a
pledge of honor, but Bishop Duggan of Chicago denounced
the organization as strongly as Cardinal Cullen did in Ireland. A
committee waited on the Bishop and asked him what they could
do to make the organization harmonize with the Church and he
answered: "Give up your object." The committee replied: "But
our object is the Independence of Ireland," and his answer was:
"I have said you must give it up." That ended the interview. He
had given accurate expression to Cardinal Cullen's attitude to-
wards Fenianism.
The members were refused absolution when they went to con-
fession unless they promised to give up the organization, and
many thousands of them refused. The form of the question
asked by the priest was: "Did you take the Fenian oath?" It
never was: "Are you a member of the Fenian organization?"
Many men availed themselves of this to evade trouble. One
fellow in Athboy, County Meath (who later became prominent in
the Hibernian organization in New York) , found the oath in the
reports of the Fenian trials and administered it to several men
without taking it himself. This enabled him to say "No" when
the priest asked, "Did you take the Fenian oath?" When he came
up to Dublin to seek recognition from Stephens he was headed
off by James Pallas (who later was very active in the Clan-na-
Gael and the Land League in New York, and was then a young
school teacher in Kildalkey and Centre for the Athboy district) ,
and prevented from getting into the organization by fraud.
There were several other similar cases.
Archbishop MacHale of Tuam — "the Lion of the Fold of
Judah" — and Bishop Keane of Cloyne refused to allow their
priests to carry out this plan, and when a Papal Rescript con-
demning the organization was issued it was not promulgated in
either Diocese. This encouraged the members in their resistance,
and largely counteracted the effect of the Cardinal's hostility.
Skibbereen is in the Diocese of Ross, where Bishop O'Hea was a
bitter enemy of the organization, but the men had only to cross
a small stream to get into the Diocese of Cloyne, and they went
by the score at Christmas and Easter and got absolution from a
Cloyne priest. In Dublin at that time the Jesuits did not enforce
the rule and men from the other parishes had only to go to
Gardiner Street Church to get the sacraments denied them in
their own.
But in ninety per cent, of the cases it was a flat denial of the
right of the priest to ask the question and to bring politics into
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
the confessional. The Fenians were accused of being anti-
clerical, but it was the Clericals who were anti-Fenian. And, there
can be no doubt that the constant controversies and the con-
tinued altar denunciations were fast developing an anti-clerical
feeling and several Fenians were temporarily estranged from the
Church. The ominous cry of "No priests in politics" was heard
everywhere. Had the fight continued there can hardly be any
doubt that it would have resulted eventually in an anti-clerical
movement in Ireland. But the fight was begun by the Church
authorities on charges that had no foundation and was forced
on the Fenians. Some of the altar denunciations were very
unjust in their statements and were invariably followed by in-
creased police activities. One priest in Belfast accused Luby,
of whom he knew nothing, and who was a most devoted husband,
of living with the wife of another man, and the Carbonari myth
was constantly flung at us. Several priests were members of the
organization, but they were mostly young curates, whose brothers
or other near relatives belonged to it. The Parish Priests were
almost unanimous in their opposition to us, even in cases where
they had been in the Young Ireland Movement.
The most notable instance of this was Bishop Moriarty of
Kerry who said "Hell is not hot enough nor eternity long enough
to punish the Fenians". Gavan Duffy said that he was all right
in 1848 and the Bishop himself defined his attitude in a public
speech thus: "When I speak to you from the pulpit or in a
Pastoral I speak as your Bishop, but here on this platform I'm
plain David Moriarty", — which caused one enthusiast in the
audience to shout: "You're our Bishop if you were boilt."
There were some comic features in the controversy, as there
are in everything in Ireland. In Cork, a Blackpool boy — where
they said "dis" and "dat" — went to confession and when the
priest asked him if he had taken the Fenian oath he said: "I
did, but what has dat to do wid me confession?" The priest
answered: "Tis an illegal society," and "de boy from the Pool"
replied: "Yerra, what does I care about deir illaigal? I tinks
more o' me sowl."
His theology was better than the priest's. It was illegal at
one time in Ireland to go to Mass, and if Lord John Russell's
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill were in force it would be illegal for a
Bishop to attach the cross to his signature to a Pastoral. The
young fellow himself told the story to Charles Underwood
O'Connell, with evident pride in his smart answer.
John F. Scanlan (brother of Michael, the poet of American
Fenianism) told me of an incident that occurred in Chicago
while Bishop Duggan was attacking the Fenians. There was a
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
121
man from his own part of Limerick who spoke with a strong
brogue and who asked him every time he met him on the street:
"How is the Cause?" One day Scanlan said to him: "Why don't
you join the organization and do something to help the Cause?"
"Because I couldn't go to my duty if I did," he replied.
"Might I ask how long is it since you went to your duty?"
asked Scanlan.
The man put his finger to his jaw reflectively and repeated
the question: "How long is it since I wint to my duty? Well,
now, let me see. Well, to the best of my recollection, it's about
forty years. But, you see, Misther Scanlan, if I wanted to go to
my duty I wouldn't want to have anything shtand in the way."
A public controversy on the subject was carried on in the
Irish People, in which the hostile priests were called "felon-
setters" and some of the letters pointed out that they were in-
citing the police to increased activity. That was undoubtedly
true. My own Parish Priest, Father Hughes of Naas, only de-
nounced the organization once, and the Peelers, who were all
Catholics except Head Constable Hogg and Sergeant Johnson,
knew all of us and stared at us while he informed them that an
illegal society existed in the parish. That night they followed
our men everywhere they went. He based his denunciation on a
letter of Cardinal Barnabo (which was not official, but was pub-
lished) in which the statement was made that the Pope had
condemned Fenianism. I wrote a letter to the Irish People in
which I stressed the activities of the Peelers on that Sunday
evening and said that the Pope was misinformed by the English
Catholic clique in Rome, and added that an Irish shoemaker was
a better judge of Irish politics than his Holiness. The letter
appeared in the suppressed number, but the country edition had
been sent off before the seizure and I sent copies of the paper to
Father Hughes and Sub-Inspector Irwin.
Next morning Father Hughes called on me at 8 o'clock, a few
minutes before the mail car brought the Dublin papers contain-
ing the report of the Irish People's suppression. I had not signed
the letter, but Father Hughes told me he knew that it was I who
wrote it, because I was the only man in the town capable of
doing so. I admitted I was the writer and defended my action.
He said he did not come to argue with me and I said: "But you
are arguing, Father Hughes, and I insist on my right to answer
you." He was particularly worked up over my statement about
the Irish shoemaker, which I defended. I had concluded the
letter with this statement — a sort of olive branch: "Altar denun-
ciations have failed elsewhere and it is to be hoped that Father
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Hughes, who has hitherto refrained from denouncing the move-
ment, will not again make the altar an instrument of political
controversy." This seemed to please him and he said: "I have
up till now kept my parish free from this trouble and you will
hear no more of it," but he added, pointing to four tall poplar
trees in the garden in front of the house: "But those unfor-
tunate men will hang as high as those trees — and they deserve
it." With that he took his departure. He was a dyed-in-the-wool
West Briton, whose father was a gombeen man in Carlow, who
left him £20,000, which he invested in the Government Funds,
and he was the landlord of the premises on which I worked. He
did not like being attacked in print and his statement was a
surrender.
In a few minutes the mail cars drove in and the Freeman
contained the report of the seizure of the Irish People. I am
convinced that if Father Hughes had read it he would not have
made the promise. But he kept it.
When I was arrested his servant girl told her sister, who was
the wife of one of the draymen where I worked, that he clasped
his hands and turning his eyes up to Heaven said: "Thank God,
a firebrand is removed from amongst us." (That did not pre-
vent him, however, from sending me his congratulations many
years afterwards, through a returned visitor to Naas, on my
securing a position on the New York Herald. He didn't know I
had heard his other statement) .
That incident illustrates the conditions existing in Ireland
at the time. My personal experience later gives a further illus-
tration:
Father Cody, the Chaplain of Mount joy Prison, was a very
zealous priest and a very likable man, but by no means bright — a
great contrast to Father Potter, who replaced him during his
vacations. His sermons were mere instructions on the catechism
and when making his rounds of the cells he always carried a
handful of devotional books, which had no attraction for the
ordinary convicts — "The Poor Man's Catechism", "Think Well On
It", St. Alphonsus Liguori's Works, or "Hell Open to Sinners" —
never anything cheerful or interesting. He could not argue at all.
He and I were on the best of terms, but we never discussed Irish
politics.
One day he said to me: "Why don't you go to confession?"
and I answered: "Sure, there would be no use because you'd ask
me a question that I don't admit your right to ask."
He turned his face away, prodded the door with his big key
and said: "Oh, I've nothing to do with your politics; I've nothing
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
123
to do with your politics." I took this as a promise that he would
not ask me if I had taken the Fenian oath, and we arranged
a day on which I would go to confession to him.
When I had finished my long story— it was five years old—
for I knew there was no use in going to Father Hughes and he
never said a word to me about confession, though I met him
almost every day in the reading room of the Catholic Institute —
Father Cody asked me: "Did you take the Fenian oath?"
I answered: "I thought you promised not to ask me that
question."
"Oh, I have to ask it," he said, "it's the rule of the Diocese."
I reminded him that he belonged to one of the orders and was
not subject to the jurisdiction of Archbishop Cullen. He told
me he was and we proceeded to argue the question, if I may call
what he said arguments. I refused to submit and we fixed
another day for him to come again. This was repeated five times
and on the fifth day I stood up and said: "Father Cody, I won't
argue politics on my knees any more."
After I was convicted, Father Potter was in Father Cody's
place and told me all the news. One day he asked me about go-
ing to confession. I told him of my experience with Father Cody
and he said: "You can trust me."
I replied that I would trust him and we arranged a date for
my confession. When I was through he asked: "Did you take the
Fenian oath?" I replied that I did and he then asked: "When
you took the oath did you believe you were committing a sin?"
I said: "I did not, but, on the contrary, was doing my duty to
Ireland."
"Have you ever had any scruples of conscience since about
taking it?" I told him I hadn't and he said: "Make an act of
contrition", and gave me absolution. I passed the word along
to the other men and they all went to confession and we all went
to communion on our last Sunday in Mountjoy. We fondly hoped
that this ended our trouble, but we were soon undeceived.
When we got to Millbank we found Father Zanetti, a Jesuit,
whose father was Italian and his mother English, as Chaplain.
He had been Chaplain in Pentonville while the first group of
prisoners were there and he had had long arguments with Kick-
ham, Tom Bourke and Mulcahy, who were more than a match for
him, though he was a very clever man, an,d he evidently resented
it. We went to him shortly after our arrival and told him we
had been at communion in Dublin, but he insisted on our mak-
ing a general confession and the trouble started all over again.
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Going behind the action of the Irish priest, he asked us if we had
taken the Fenian oath and refused us absolution unless we gave
it up. Some of the men yielded, but most of us refused. He
visited us in our cells, and we chatted freely with him, but I
never exchanged another word with him about Fenianism. He
told me a story about Cardinal Manning (not then a Cardinal)
giving permission to eat meat an Fridays and fast days and one
Irishman asked another coming out of the church what he
thought of it. "Oh, what can you expect?" said the other, "when
we have a Protestant for an Archbishop?" With some Irishmen,
eating meat on Fridays is worse than committing murder.
When we were removed to Portland after ten months in Mill-
bank we found the Chaplain was named Poole, descended from
a brother of Cardinal Poole of Henry the Eighth's time, a nice,
kindly little man. He was overmatched in argument by some of
the Fenians and all of them had refused to give up the oath.
When we told him about our experiences in Dublin and Millbank,
he seemed glad to be relieved of the trouble and told us he would
not ask us to make a general confession. So I went to confes-
sion and received communion twice during my twelve weeks in
Portland.
But I was not yet through with Father Zanetti. I was sent
back to Millbank with John McClure and others for taking part
in a strike in sympathy with McClure, who was put on bread
and water for "idleness" when his hands were covered with blis-
ters from handling the pick with which we worked cutting Port-
land stone. I went to confession and told Father Zanetti I had
received absolution in Portland, but he found another way of
getting around it. During my previous stay in Millbank — before
my last confession — I had made an attempt to escape and had
hurt a warder in the struggle for possession of his keys, for
which I was very sorry, as he was a harmless poor fellow who
later told me he made allowance for my state of mind and had
no hard feelings against me. When I had finished my tale of
sin Father Zanetti said to me: "You used violence in attempting
to escape." I told him I was a prisoner of war, held by a Gov-
ernment which had no right whatever in Ireland, and that I
was justified in using any means in trying to escape.
Then followed a long argument, in which Father Zanetti
quibbled a lot. I reminded him that the warders carried heavy
oak clubs and that the Civil Guard, who carried carbines, had
orders to shoot a prisoner if they could not prevent his escape
in any other way and that this justified me in using violence.
"Ah," said Father Zanetti, "if he had his carbine levelled
and was about to shoot, you would be justified in knocking it
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
125
out of his hand or striking him." "Then it would be too late," I
replied, and added: "Do you mean to tell me that God Almighty
would split hairs as to whether I struck the man with a carbine a
second before or a second after he had levelled it at me?"
The argument went on in this way for a long time, and at
length Father Zanetti said: "I am an officer of the prison and
it is my duty to see the rules enforced."
Then I stood up and said: "Father Zanetti, I came to you as
a priest of the Catholic Church. I don't make any confessions
to an officer of an English prison." That was the end of the
confession and it was a very long time before I went to con-
fession again. But Father Zanetti remained on good terms with
me and often came to see me in my cell. I was very much sur-
prised when Arthur O'Connor, M. P., who was an active church
worker in London, and often met him, told me in New York that
Father Zanetti spoke highly of me and of Thomas Francis Bourke,
while he disparaged O'Donovan Rossa.
Times have changed, and there is no change more significant
than the attitude of Irish Bishops towards the National Cause.
From the day of the appointment of Archbishop Richardson to
the See of Armagh they had been hostile to the advanced
National Movement. He was President of the College of Valla-
dolid in Spain during the Peninsular War and had given very
effective help to Wellington, which, I believe, he justified on the
ground of Napoleon's bad treatment of the Pope. After his ap-
pointment as Archbishop of Armagh he continued to be strongly
pro-English and he nullified Daniel O'Connell's opposition to the
demand of the English Government for the right to exercise a
Veto on the appointment of Irish Bishops, by agreeing that the
Bishops should give a pledge of "Loyalty to the King of the Brit-
ish Empire". From that day on the clergy of a Diocese on the
death of a Bishop named three men: one, Dignissimus (the first
choice) , another, Dignior, and a third, Dignus, and sent them to
Rome. During the Pontificate of Pius the Ninth — Pio Nono, — the
three names selected by the clergy were usually ignored unless
some one of them had a strong pro-British leaning. If none of
the three was of this type, some other man saturated with anti-
National feeling was appointed. This naturally had a marked
effect on the Irish clergy. It was a plain intimation that priests
of pronounced Nationalist opinions had no chance of promotion.
The most notable instance of this was Archbishop Croke. Born
in the Diocese of Cloyne, he was a titular Bishop in Auckland,
but was on a visit to Ireland when Bishop Keane of Cloyne died.
He was named Dignissimus at the meeting of the clergy of the
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Diocese, but was cast aside and a Loyal West Briton appointed to
succeed the Nationalist Dr. Keane. He then went to Rome and
rumor said, "made his peace". As he was about to return to New
Zealand, Archbishop Leahy of Cashel died and, without being
named by the clergy of the Archdiocese, he was appointed to
succeed Dr. Leahy. The rumor that he had "made his peace"
seemed to be partly verified by his speech at the O'Connell Cen-
tenary that same year, which was in marked contrast with his
former utterances. He lauded the British Constitution, but
expressed regret that Ireland did not get her share of its benefits.
The change in the attitude of the Bishops began to be noted,
especially in the case of the younger men, after the heroic sacri-
fice of Easter Week, 1916 (which had a marked effect on the
whole race) . It has continued steadily ever since. It was
given a strong impetus by the speech of Cardinal O'Connell at
Madison Square Garden, New York, in 1918. He did not commit
himself definitely to the Republican Movement, but the implica-
tions of his speech to a cheering throng of Irish Republicans
in a hall profusely decorated with the Green, White and Orange
Tricolor of the Republic were all in justification of the demand
for it.
It was the first time that a Prince of the Church had appeared
at such a meeting and given his adhesion to the movement for
the Complete Independence of Ireland. Cardinal O'Connell blazed
the way and others soon followed.
At the great Convention in Philadelphia on Washington's
Birthday, 1919 — the greatest and most representative gathering
of Irishmen ever held anywhere — Cardinal Gibbons, who had up
to then opposed the advanced movement (but had never attacked
it) stood in his purple robes, with twenty-eight Bishops fresh
from a meeting in Washington sitting around him, and gave his
blessing to the movement which Cardinal Cullen had anathema-
tized and which Pius IX had condemned in a Rescript. As I
stood behind the venerable Cardinal, noting the evidence of the
tremendous change, my mind went back to the days when we
were cursed from nearly every altar in Ireland and I nearly broke
down. No other such revolutionary change had occurred in my
time.
And yet there were some well meaning, but shortsighted
Irishmen, under the evil influence of a cold blooded cynic, who
opposed and tried to frustrate the steps leading up to that splen-
did spectacle. They were told that inviting Cardinal O'Connell
to Madison Square Garden would give a sectarian character
to the meeting, would antagonize Protestant Ulster and produce
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
127
a bad effect in Infidel France and Atheist Italy, and give the
movement a setback. But we went ahead, knowing that the
chief thing needed was the Unity of the Race on a reasonable and
progressive policy and the breaking down of the English Propa-
ganda in America. That Unity could be best secured and the
world convinced of our strength by aligning the Hierarchy on
our side.
In describing Fenianism to Sir Horace Plunkett at a dinner
in the house of Justice Martin J. Keogh in New Rochelle some
years ago, I said: "We'd have beaten the Bishops only for the
English Government, and we'd have beaten the English Govern-
ment but for the Bishops, but a combination of the two was too
much for us." That was really what the Fenians had to face.
It is sincerely to be hoped that in the future progress of
Ireland towards complete National Independence — which con-
notes the severance of every remaining political link with the
British Empire — the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church
in Ireland will be found solidly arrayed behind their people in the
endeavor to attain the inevitable goal of the Irish Nation.
PART III.
CHAPTER XIX.
FENIANISM IN THE BRITISH ARMY.
Element of the Movement Most Dangerous to England — Impor-
tance of the Trained Man in Irish Insurrections — Fenian
Soldiers in British Service Remained Loyal to the Organi-
zation With Very Few Exceptions.
The element of Fenianism which gave the movement its
greatest hope of success from the military point of view, and
made it most dangerous to England, was the organization in the
British army. Properly utilized it would have supplied Ireland
with a large body of trained fighting men and correspondingly
weakened and demoralized the forces of the enemy at the very
outset of the contemplated insurrection.
In 1865 and the beginning of 1866 that organization was still
intact and could have been used to deal England a decisive blow.
It would have supplied the nucleus of a trained army, under con-
ditions more favorable to Ireland than had ever existed since the
Anglo-Norman invasion. It was not utilized, and when, after
many postponements, the shattered and broken movement under-
took to strike, the organization in the army was gone, its best
men were in prison and the disaffected regiments scattered all
over the British Empire.
Irish insurrections in the past had all failed because of lack
of the essentials of military success — trained men, educated offi-
cers, arms and ammunition. In 1848 there were neither arms,
ammunition, trained men, officers nor organization, and the at-
tempt at rebellion was doomed to ignominious failure from the
start. Yet in Ireland at that time there were fully twice as many
men fit to fight as there were in 1798. It was the precipitancy
in taking the field without any preparation which caused the
utter failure.
The United Irishmen had a fine organization and plenty of
pikes in 1798, but few firearms of any kind. Outside of Lord
Edward Fitzgerald and Thomas Russell, who had been officers in
the British army, William Aylmer, who had been a Lieutenant of
Militia, one or two men who had seen some service in France
and several who had received a partial training in the Volunteers,
128
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
129
their leaders were all untrained civilians. Yet they inflicted many
defeats on the English forces and killed or wounded thousands
of the enemy in a few weeks of fighting.
The United Irishmen depended on a French invasion to sup-
ply the basis of their military organization and arms and am-
munition. The principal French expedition, under Hoche, in
1796, failed to land; when the second, scarcely numbering a thou-
sand men, under Humbert, landed at Killala, in August, 1798, the
insurrection had been crushed, and it was two months later
(October 11, 1798) when the last one, in which Wolfe Tone was
an officer, was destroyed in Lough Swilly. Had even a small force
like Humbert's landed in May or June while large bodies of in-
surgents were still in the field, the result would certainly have
been very different.
But the thing which was most disastrous of all to the United
Irishmen was their rejection of the offer of the Irish militia ser-
geants to deliver up Dublin Castle in 1797. Had the leaders ac-
cepted it the insurrection could not have fared worse than it
actually did, and if the militiamen had made good, Irish history
would have been written very differently. The effect on the rest
of the militia, many of the yeomen and the Irishmen in the regu-
lar army would undoubtedly have been very great. Even in the
face of many failures a number of militiamen and yeomen de-
serted to the Rebels, and it is entirely reasonable to suppose that
thousands would have done so if Dublin Castle had fallen.
But civilians decided a purely military question, and the in-
surrection of 1798 failed. The same thing occurred in the case
of the Fenians, and the military result was even worse.
Hugh O'Neill began his eight years war (1595-1603) with a
small, but well trained force, and at Clontibret and the Yellow
Ford inflicted crushing defeats on English armies led by Eng-
land's best Generals and superior in numbers and equipment.
For 400 years before O'Neill's time the Irish were virtually able
to maintain their independence and confine English authority
within the narrow limits of the Pale by reason of the fact that
every clansman was a trained soldier and every clan a military
unit, easily mobilized, able to get its simple weapons and plenty
of food and clothing within its own territory, and because Ireland,
always an easily defended country, was then practically covered
with woods.
In the struggle with Cromwell (1641-52), in spite of civilian
and foreign interference, they made a splendid military record
because of the fact that Owen Roe O'Neill, a great soldier, who
had held Arras against Conde and Turenne, the greatest Generals
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of their time, was able to bring from Spain 200 veteran Irish offi-
cers, who helped him to create a small, but well disciplined army.
He avoided pitched battles until his men were fully trained, and
then he gave his little army the best training of all — the train-
ing of battle. And what Owen Roe did at Benburb against an
enemy much superior in numbers and equipment can always be
done with Irish soldiers when they are ably led. Their superb
soldierly qualities are recognized by all military men whose opin-
ion is worth having.
In the war between William and James (1689-91) which, aside
from its poor politics, was a military contest between Ireland and
England — in which England was aided by a Dutch force and by
German mercenaries — the Irish were able to hold out for two
years against heavy odds in men and armament because they
had a small, but well-trained force and many trained officers to
serve as a nucleus of their army. And they might, by enlisting
a larger force, have won in the end but for the cowardice, avarice
and treachery of the English King in whose cause they wasted
their valor.
The important element in all this, and in the whole period
prior thereto since the English Invasion, from 1169 to 1595, was
the trained man.
The same was true of the Fenian movement. There were in
Ireland in 1865 about 26,000 British regular troops. Of these,
as already mentioned, 8,000 were sworn Fenians. Not less than
sixty per cent, of the rank and file of the entire British forces
were Irish, including those of immediate Irish ancestry born in
England and Scotland, and at that period the latter were among
the sturdiest Irishmen alive. In the British military establish-
ment stationed outside of Ireland, we had 7,000 I. R. B. men.
Then the Militia in Ireland, which was not under arms because
the government dared not call it out, numbered some 12,000
men — more than half of whom were in our organization.
When, in addition, the fact is borne in mind that we had
such a large number of American officers in Ireland — to say
nothing of the hundreds of others who were ready to come over —
it must be admitted that trained men were available in abun-
dance, and had the Insurrection started as originally planned,
it would have been one of the most formidable with which Eng-
land ever had to deal.
True, our civilian forces were insufficiently armed, but the
large supply of rifles, ammunition and equipment stored in Brit-
ish arsenals in Ireland could certainly be captured by well-
planned, determined attacks.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
131
Most of the British commissioned officers were at that time
even more incompetent than they proved themselves to be in
the Boer War, and the regiments were really run by the Adju-
tants and the non-coms. The latter included a large propor-
tion of Irish sergeants, and hundreds of these were Fenians. Be-
sides the men stationed in Ireland, many of the best Fenian regi-
ments were at important strategic points in England. A Fenian
at the War Office could not have placed them to greater advan-
tage.
Some "wiseacres" who know nothing of the facts have under-
taken to prove by mere assertion that the Fenians could not have
relied on the Irish soldiers in the British army; that they were
mere pothouse patriots, with neither sincerity of purpose nor
stamina. The opinions of such men are worthless. The scores
of Irish soldiers who bore long terms of imprisonment for their
part in Fenianism, gave ample proof of their sincerity. The
measures taken by the British Government for the suppression
of the organization in the army bore striking testimony to its
belief in the genuineness of the danger.
My testimony ought to be worth something in the matter of
the reliability of the Fenian soldiers of the British army. For
months while my name was in the Hue and Cry — a fact known to
scores of soldiers — I mixed freely among them, in Dublin, at the
Curragh Camp, and in Athlone, arranging plans, assigning men
to special duty, swearing in new members, and encouraging the
old ones, and I was arrested only after four months of this work,
through a spy, against whom I had been fully warned, but whom
I had to face because of civilian blundering, in order to try to
avert a threatened danger. No man whom I really trusted, or
who was trusted by my predecessors in charge of the organiza-
tion in the army, betrayed the cause, and with the exception of
two or three Government spies, the men who gave testimony
against their fellows were all trapped by lying stories while they
were on starvation diet and practically deserted in Arbor Hill
Military Prison, and then they did not tell a tenth part of what
they really knew. The rest of the 15,000 remained loyal and true
to the last.
I got the Hue and Cry — the secret publication of the police —
out of the Government Printing office, each week, through
two compositors who have been dead for many years. All the
Catholic printers except one were searched every evening as they
were leaving the office. The one exception was John Podesta,
who was born in Dublin of Italian parents, and they thought it
unlikely that he would be a Fenian. But he was. He took a copy
of the Hue and Cry as soon as it came off the press, carried it
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outside and handed it to Michael Clohessy, who had already been
searched, and I had it within an hour. There was not a Gov-
ernment Department, not even excepting the police, in which we
had not friends who served us faithfully and promptly at that
time.
As to the wiseacres' theories about the folly of trusting to
mutinous soldiers, they are sufficiently refuted by modern history,
without going back to ancient Rome or Byzantium. Before the
days of Fenianism, but within the memory of men then still
young, whole French regiments had gone over to Parisian in-
surgents, and helped to change the Government. Spanish and
Spanish-American Governments had been frequently overturned
by the army. The most formidable revolt which England has
ever had to face in India originated in 1857 in a mutiny of her
own Sepoys, and they led it from start to finish.
That kind of thing is still going on in the world. Within
recent times the Young Turks deposed Abdul Hamid by marching
a whole division of the regular army on Constantinople. And
later still, the army and the navy combined toppled the King of
Portugal off his throne and set up a Republic. All through
human history military revolts have played a most important
part; Governments still fear them and revolutionists devote much
of their time and energy, with good reason, to bringing them
about.
The Fenians missed making history in a similar manner, not
through any failure of their organization in the British army,
but because their civilian leaders failed to use it while it was
ready to their hand.
CHAPTER XX.
"PAGAN" O'LEARY.
First Organizer Appointed by Stephens to Propagate Fenianism
in the British Army — Swore in Thousands of Soldiers — His
"Paganism" Merely an Eccentricity — Died Reconciled to the
Church.
No account of Fenianism in the British army would be com-
plete without a sketch of "Pagan" O'Leary, who was the first man
appointed by James Stephens to take charge of the work. The
"Pagan" was a unique character. A fanatic on the question of
Irish Nationality and Roman interference in Irish affairs, he was
generous and charitable to a fault, and under the disguise of
stern looks and harsh words carried a heart as tender as a
woman's. His "Paganism" was only a distorted kind of Nation-
alism.
His real name was Patrick O'Leary and he was born in or
near Macroom — "in old Ibh Laoghaire by the Hills" — about 1825
or 1826. His age can only be estimated by the fact that in 1846
when the Mexican War broke out, he was a very young man
studying for the priesthood in an American Catholic college, the
walls of which he scaled to enlist in a regiment going to the
front. He took part in several battles and was hit in one of
them by a spent ball at the top of the forehead. It left an in-
dention that was quite visible and easily felt with the fingers.
This undoubtedly affected his mind to the extent of making him
very eccentric.
His eccentricity took the form of a sort of religious mania.
He hated Rome and England with equal intensity, and his queer
notion was that after driving out the English, Ireland should re-
turn to the old Paganism. He was not really a Pagan, but an
anti-Roman Catholic. He never talked of the old Pagan wor-
ship or beliefs, but was eloquent in extolling the superiority of
Tir-na-nOg over the Christian Heaven. He did not seem to
doubt the existence of either of them and talked as if a man
could make his own choice as to where he would go after death.
In Tir-na-nOg not only were the old Gaelic sports carried on
and fine horses and good hunting dogs available, but the com-
pany was of the best. Fionn MacCumhail, Ossian, Oscar, Goll
MacMorna, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne and the rest of the Fenian
133
134
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
heroes and the beautiful women they fought and sang about were
all there, and he had no doubt that Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh
O'Donnell, Owen Roe, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Wolfe Tone and
Robert Emmet had all found their way to Tir-na-nOg. But Der-
mot MacMurrough, the Queen's O'Neills, O'Donnells and Mac-
Guires, and others who sold their country to Elizabeth; Jimmy
O'Brien and the other informers of 1798; Paul Cullen (as he
called the Archbishop of Dublin), and Sullivan Goulah could
never gain admission.
After he returned to America In 1871 and learned what had
occurred while he was in prison he added Pierce Nagle, Corydon,
Massey and Bishop Moriarty to the list of the excluded. These
he assumed would be all in Heaven, though he would have pre-
ferred to have them in the other place, and no true Irishman
would want to associate with them, either in this world or the
next. One of his chief grievances against the Church was the
giving of the last rites to traitors, informers and enemies of the
people. His Heaven was entirely Irish. His conception of it was
Nationalism gone mad.
"The Pagan" had his particular grievances against St. Patrick,
which made him drop the name. He claimed that the Apostle of
Ireland had demoralized the Irish by teaching them to forgive
their enemies. Any man who did that was a poltroon. It was
like listening to the dialogue between Ossian, back from Tir-
na-nOg, and St. Patrick. As knowledge of that story was com-
mon all over Munster when "The Pagan" was young, he had
probably often heard it recited, and it became his Bible.
Before St. Patrick's time, he said, the Gaels had the finest
life of any people on earth. They sent expeditions to Britain,
Gaul and Spain and came back with their galleys laden with
the spoils of war — gold, silver and beautiful women — enriching
the land thereby, especially with the fine women. St. Patrick
had put an end to all that and now the people, except a few in
whom the old spirit had survived, were good for nothing but
"thumping their craws and telling their beads." That was what
made the Gael an easy prey for the Dane, the Norman and the
Saxon.
Another grievance "The Pagan" had against the "Eyetalian"
Church was that there was a monopoly of the saints for the
priests and the monks; and he did not appear to have any doubt
about these saints having the choice places in Heaven. "Did you
ever hear of them making a saint of a poor devil of a soldier?"
he would ask. And his hearers, being generally unable to recall
the names of the warriors who had been canonized, were put to
silence.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
135
But his religious notions were entirely political, and his favor-
ite expression about the ranting partisans of England was that
he would "rather be a louse on a rat's back than an Orange-
man." And when stripped to be put into the convict clothes in
Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, they found a scapular and an Agnus
Dei hanging from his neck.
After his conviction he was asked the usual question about his
religion and he answered that he was a Pagan — "an old Milesian
Pagan." They told him they had no Pagans in the prison and
he assured them they had one. Well, he must attend religious
service of some kind, and they had only Catholics, Protestants
and Jews, so he must make his choice. He refused and after
the first Sunday was put on a bread and water diet.
The next Sunday he refused again and the dose of bread and
water was repeated. He was brought before the Governor and
said to him: "I see you want to starve me so that I'll be no good
when the fight comes. Well, if I must have some religion, I'd
rather be a beggar than a robber. Put me down as a Papist."
After that, during his seven years in prison he attended Mass
every Sunday, and, in England, was brought to the chapel every
morning for religious instruction, which was always accompanied
by the singing of hymns, and on Sunday evenings to vespers.
But among the convicts in Woking — the invalid prison — he
ranted his "Paganism", to the great scandal and annoyance of
the other Fenian prisoners, and at last was called to task by
Roantree, who taunted him with insincerity because he wore the
scapular and the Agnus Dei. It was then "The Pagan" explained
that he kept them only as a keepsake from his mother. This
incident, which took place among a lot of Englishmen, resulted
in his developing an insane hatred for Roantree, and he circu-
lated the most absurd stories about him. The confinement had
greatly intensified "The Pagan's" mental aberration.
After our release from prison in 1871 and while we were in
Washington as the guests of the city, we found that "The Pagan"
had told several of our Irish friends that Roantree was a British
spy. Fortunately for him, Roantree did not hear of it, but it
had to be stopped somehow to prevent a scandal. Acting on the
assumption that he was a man of unbalanced mind, I got four
or five of the younger ex-prisoners together and we concocted a
plan. We sent for "The Pagan" and I informed him that we were
a courtmartial to try the case. We would hear all the evidence
he had against Roantree and if he was guilty we would sentence
him to death and "The Pagan" would be the executioner. But if
"The Pagan" failed to prove his case we would kill him for bring-
ing a false charge against a good man.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
The plan worked splendidly. "The Pagan" at once agreed to
the terms and before an hour had passed admitted that he had
no evidence whatever. He did not mean that Roantree was a
traitor exactly. But he was a crawling slave who went down on
his knees to the "English-Eyetalian soul-savers" in the prison.
We then told him that the death penalty would surely be in-
flicted if he ever repeated the charge; he promised good be-
havior and kept his word. We could hardly keep ourselves from
laughing during the proceedings, but "The Pagan" took them as
seriously as he did his grandmother's stories about the fairies
when he was a child, and he was most discreet in his behavior
during the rest of our week's stay in Washington.
After the Mexican War, O'Leary learned the trade of a car-
penter and roamed all over the United States and some of
Mexico. He finally settled down in New York and joined the
Fenian Brotherhood soon after its organization. One of his
favorite habits was to go down to Castle Garden and watch the
immigrants landing. He would question them about conditions
in the Old Land and if he met a young fellow who was friendless
and found him to be a Nationalist he would take him to his
boarding house and keep him until he secured him employment.
His impatient spirit chafed at the slowness of the Fenian
work and he made several trips to Ireland to see things for him-
self. Then he would return to America to hurry them up.
"The Pagan" spent very little money on himself, but was very
liberal in his contributions to the cause and in helping good men
who were in need. Stephens was hard pressed for money in
1863, and hearing it from Luby, who was then in America, "The
Pagan" gave him $100 to take to "The Captain". Later he sent
him $46 by Roantree, when he was returning to Ireland. We
have the evidence of it in the letters seized at Luby's house and
in one found on Michael Moore, the pikemaker, when he was
arrested. They were read in evidence at the trials.
Moore, who was then in Troy, N. Y., wanted to go home to
Dublin and "The Pagan" told him to get the members in Troy to
subscribe to buy him a rifle. Then "The Pagan's" letter con-
tinues:
"If I had it to spare I would pay your passage money my-
self, but you are aware of my sending $146 on to No. 1 — that
is, $100 by the Doctor and $46 by Bill Roantree, which leaves
me short at present. Saint Sylvester McDermott is here at
present from the West. He says he is going to Ireland. I do
not know whether he is or not, and I don't care a damn either
way about the lying, Slavish Wretch."
This allusion is to "Red Jim" McDermott, who later was noto-
rious as a British spy. With all his eccentricities, "The Pagan"
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
137
was a good judge of character. "The Doctor" was Thomas Clarke
Luby.
Richard Pigott, the traitor and forger, who always pretended
to have inside information about the Fenians, says in his "Recol-
lections of An Irish Journalist" that "The Pagan's" real name
was Murphy. I knew a nephew of his named Murphy, who was
clerk of the Relief Committee during the visit of Mr. Parnell and
Mr. John Dillon to America in 1880, but I assumed that he was
his sister's son. The conclusion of the letter to Moore seems to
settle the question of the right name. It says:
"And when you write to me for ever after this, always
address me as follows: 'O'Laoghari, H. R. and M. P.' The
cursed English way of spelling my name is O'Leary, and the
old Ancient Milesian Pagan way of spelling it is O'Laoghari.
O'Leary is English, I curse it. O'Laoghari is Milesian, I bless it.
"O'Laoghari
"Hereditary Rebel and Milesian Pagan."
This letter was dated, 69 Crosby Street, New York, September
22, 1863. "The Pagan" sailed from Boston for Galway on October
6 of the same year.
I met him first in Denieffe's tailoring establishment in Ann
Street, Dublin, soon after he came over that time, and, in spite
of his odd manner and speech, I was greatly impressed with his
sincerity.
He was an inveterate smoker, but never used tobacco on which
duty had been paid to England, and never drank liquor, tea or
coffee for the same reason. He was the first Sinn Feiner and he
preached the doctrine in season and out, sometimes with embar-
rassing results. A waiter at the "Ship" or the "Ormond" would
ask him: "Will you have tea or coffee, sir?" and he would at once
and in loud voice read him a lecture on the foolishness of putting
money in the pocket of the British Government and helping to
support "Mrs. Brown" — as he always called Queen Victoria. When
his American tobacco ran out he would try to find a Yankee
ship — they sometimes came to Dublin in those days — and would
fast till he could renew the supply from a sailor. But he preached
temperance for its own sake, as well as to injure the British
Treasury.
Pierce Nagle, the informer, swore at the trial of Luby that
"The Pagan", when in Dublin, slept in the Irish People office and
spent much of his time casting bullets. As Nagle was a matter-
of-fact sort of a scoundrel who did not deviate very much from
the truth in his testimony and was himself employed in the
office, this statement was probably true. A free dormitory would
138
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
be quite consistent with "The Pagan's" idea of economy, and
casting bullets at the headquarters of the organization, under
the very noses of the police, would be in accord with the reckless
disregard of ordinary considerations of prudence which charac-
terized much of the Fenian action at that time.
After swearing in thousands of soldiers and never having met
with a refusal, "The Pagan" made his first mistake on the Bridge
of Athlone in 1864. He met a soldier there, got into talk with
him and tried to make a Fenian of him. The soldier led him
on until he committed himself by asking him to take the oath
and then called a policeman who was standing at one end of the
bridge. There was another "Peeler" at the other end, so there
was no escape and he was arrested. He was tried at the next
assizes and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. He was
the first of the Fenians to wear the "convict grey".
We knew the time of his arrival at the Broadstone station
and arranged to cheer him up by conveying to him the news
which Stephens had just sent out, "the fight will be next year."
Mrs. O'Donovan Rossa, who had only recently become Rossa's
third wife, and the wife of Denis Cromien, the man who built
St. John's Church in Thomas Street, went up to him as he stepped
from the train, shook hands with him, and after a few words
Mrs. Rossa said: "John Hughes is coming home next year."
William F. Roantree, James O'Connor, Dan Downing, Con
O'Mahony and I were standing near, so O'Leary took in the situ-
ation at once and his face lighted up.
John Hughes was "The Pagan's" particular friend in New
York and he had promised to go to Ireland for the fight. So
when John Hughes was "coming over next year" that meant that
the fight was to take place in 1865, and the Peelers who heard
the remark were none the wiser. John Hughes didn't go over,
nor did a great many others in America who had made similar
promises, but the fault was not theirs. Between postponements
in Ireland and the disastrous Split in America, the organization
was only a shattered remnant when the attempt to fight was
made in March, 1867.
"The Pagan" had a number of queer photographs taken in
New York before going over on his last trip to Ireland which
illustrated the odd character of the man. He was dressed in a
Garibaldian shirt, but gray, instead of red, and from his belt
hung two revolvers and a bowie knife. One of his hands pointed
to a black flag, hanging from a horizontal staff, with a skull and
cross bones displayed on it, and over them the words, "Inde-
pendence or ?" He was a small, wiry man, with good
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
139
features, an aquiline nose and clear, blue-grey eyes. His hair,
mustache and "imperial" were perfectly white, and he looked
much older than he actually was.
After his release in 1871 he settled for a time in New York,
but soon resumed his roving habits and his old friends hardly
ever knew where to find him until he entered the Soldiers' Home
in Norfolk, Va., where he died many years ago, fully reconciled
to the Church. Before he left New York he was once taken ill
and immediately sent for a priest and obtained the consolations
of religion. He was hardly out of bed when he began to pitch
into the "Eyetalians" as fiercely as ever, so some waggish friends
played a practical joke on him to test the reality of his "Pagan-
Ism". They put some stuff in his coffee which made him very
sick for a short time and he promptly sent for a priest again.
After that his attacks on the Church became less and less fre-
quent until eventually they ceased entirely.
This queer, unbalanced man, who was more like a survival of
the fifth century than a modern Irishman, was able, in spite
of his mental defects, to bring into existence the element in
Fenianism that was most really dangerous to England, and would
have proved to be most effective in the struggle if the Fenian
leadership had been equal to the occasion. Self-sacrifice and
devotion were common enough among the Fenians, whatever
other qualities they may have lacked, and no Irishman who ever
lived was more devoted or self-sacrificing than Patrick O'Leary
who called himself "The Pagan".
CHAPTER XXI.
HOW THE BRITISH ARMY WAS "ORGANIZED".
William Francis Roantree Succeeded "Pagan" O'Leary as Organ-
izer of Fenianism in the Army, and did Most Effective
Work.
The organization in the British army was not started by
"Pagan" O'Leary. Some "Centres" in garrison towns had sworn
in soldiers, and a few men already enrolled had enlisted, but
Stephens discountenanced the work of spreading the movement
in the army. It was impossible, however, to reach all of those
who were doing work in that line, as no record was kept of
those who had enlisted. So the swearing in of soldiers went on
irregularly, though the number for a while was not large.
Two young teachers from the Skibbereen district of Cork,
who had been up for training in the Agricultural School at Glas-
nevin, had some trouble in the school, and enlisted in the Twelfth
Regiment of Foot. Their names were Driscoll and Sullivan, and
they were both members. They started to work immediately and
swore in a good many men in their own regiment and in the
Eighty-fourth, both of which were then stationed in Dublin. Con
O'Mahony of Macroom, who was Stephens' secretary, Dan
Downing of Skibbereen, who was a clerk in the Irish People office,
James O'Connor and I were walking in the Phoenix Park one
Sunday in 1863 when the two young soldiers came along and I
was introduced to them. In the course of the talk I found they
were quite sanguine about getting the great majority of the
Irishmen in the army. They themselves, without money or
civilian help, had already sworn in several hundred men.
The progress which those two young fellows had made was
the main factor in breaking down the objections of Stephens, but
he did not yield until he and "The Pagan" had a very hot argu-
ment. "The Pagan" had already started to work and he threat-
ened that, if Stephens stopped him, he would return to America
and tell the men there that Stephens was opposed to demoraliz-
ing the army of the enemy. The general sentiment was on "The
Pagan's" side and Stephens at last yielded and appointed O'Leary
Chief Organizer for the British Army.
"The Pagan" set to work in his own way and went where he
liked, coming back occasionally to report to Stephens. He spent
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
141
very little money, and none at all on drink. Besides being
naturally a sober man, he had the prejudice already described
against using anything that put money into the British Treasury.
His plan of work was very simple. Men already sworn in would
tell him of friends in their own or other regiments, or the civilian
Fenians in garrison towns would introduce him to their acquain-
tances among the soldiers. In that way most of the men he met
were already vouched for. He would make appointments to meet
them either in a friend's house or on a country road, and he
would talk to them in groups and swear them in separately.
An old soldier knew how to talk to soldiers, and "The Pagan's"
talks were most effective. In his rough and ready way he told
them of the use to which England put them while they were
young and healthy and the hard lot of the maimed and crippled
veteran who was left to beg on the streets or to die in the poor-
house. The few who lived to get a pension after twenty-one
years' service were the exceptions.
But the most effective part of his appeals was where he
described the heartless evictions, many of them carried out with
bodies of troops to overawe the people, and the sufferings of the
victims on the emigrant ships and after their arrival in America.
He had seen thousands of them and could speak from personal
knowledge, while many of his hearers were themselves victims
of the Clearances, or had relatives who were. And he pictured
the man who would fire on his own flesh and blood for England's
shilling a day as worse than a dog.
In those days bloody fights between Irish and English regi-
ments were very common in the garrisons, and the Irish always
won. I remember seeing one desperate battle between the Eighty-
seventh and a regiment of Guards — either the Coldstreams or
the Scots Fusiliers — and the Faug-a-Ballaghs chased the Guards-
men all along the Quays from near the Royal Barracks and over
one of the bridges to near Carlisle Bridge on Aston's Quay, where
they captured the man they were after, in spite of his comrades
and a large body of police, and threw him into the Liffey. He
was rescued by a man in a boat and the fight ended. The provost
guard had often to be called out at Aldershot and the Curragh
to quell an Anglo-Irish riot in which serious wounds were inflicted
with belt buckles and pewter quarts.
With rough eloquence "The Pagan" would touch the race
pride of the Irish soldiers by showing how they themselves could
smash the English army and give Ireland a sweet revenge for
seven hundred years of robbery, persecution and slavery. All
this would not be said in the form of a speech, but conversa-
142
RECOLLECTIONS Of" AN IRISH REBEL
tionally and in detached pieces. He got the men to help him by
telling their own experiences and what had driven them to .join
the army. Many of these stories were tragic. In those days the
Irishmen in the British army were of fine physique and many of
them had received a good primary education. When later I came
to know them I was amazed at their intelligence. Many of the
sergeants were men fit to hold commissions and had in them
the material for competent regimental commanders. And they
were not all Catholics.
"The Pagan" swore in soldiers in all sorts of places, — not a
few in sentry boxes, while yet on duty with rifles in their hands.
They were all over Ireland, but mainly in the chief garrison
towns and at the Curragh Camp. Some of the regiments were
moved to England and the work went on without interruption.
In the North of England and Scotland, where there were a great
many Irishmen, soldiers and civilian Fenians speedily got into
touch, and it was easy to transmit messages.
But "The Pagan's" work was mainly propagandist and, as it
was all done in about a year, the organization that resulted was
rather loose. Probably "The Pagan" would not have been able
to do any better if he had the time. Some weeks after O'Leary's
arrest, William Francis Roantree was appointed in his place by
Stephens.
Roantree was born in Leixlip, County Kildare. His father
was an auctioneer doing a good business, and he himself was
trained as a butcher. He had several brothers, all of whom
were Fenians, except one, who in after years was an Inspector
of National Schools. William Roantree had served for some
time in the American Navy and had seen some service with the
famous filibusterer, General Walker, in Nicaragua. He had re-
turned to Ireland in 1861 and started the Fenian work in Leixlip,
where there was soon one of the largest Circles in the country.
It included strong contingents in Maynooth, Celbridge, Lucan
and other towns in Kildare and Dublin. As he was a man of
fine physique and military appearance, with good manners, he
was a great contrast to his predecessor, and no better selection
could have been made.
Roantree had for assistants James Rynd, a Kerryman, who
was in the Dublin Fire Brigade, and, I think, had served in the
Irish Papal Brigade; Thomas Baines, a Sligo man, who had
also been for a time in the Fire Brigade; and, towards the end,
Jack Mullen, a Dublin man, who had seen some service in the
Federal Navy in the earlier part of the Civil War. In after years
Mullen turned out rather poorly and was never much of an
acquisition to the organizing staff.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
143
Roantree whipped the organization in the army into better
shape and it advanced rapidly under his management. He got in
touch with the men in the garrisons in Dublin, Cork, Limerick,
Waterford, Fermoy, Buttevant, Athlone, Mullingar, Dundalk, Bel-
fast, Derry, Enniskillen and the Curragh Camp, and picked out
one man for "Centre" of each of the regiments. I found them
all to be very intelligent men.
I became acquainted with several of these men, while Roan-
tree was still in charge, through my close personal relations
with him. I accompanied him on several of his visits to the
men stationed in Dublin and met those at the Curragh Camp
when I went with him to the Curragh races.
When I took Roantree's place I found he had appointed Pat-
rick Keating, a handsome six feet two Clareman, as "Centre"
of the Fifth Dragoon Guards. When a much younger man Keat-
ing had enlisted in the Sixth Carbineers, and his family had
"bought him out." During that enlistment he was on John
Mitchel's escort when they took him away to the ship in 1848,
and again, in his second term, he was on the Luby escort. The
thought of it was too much for him, and as he saw Luby taken
from the van into Mountjoy Prison he burst into tears. The
sight of the helmeted dragoon, sword in hand, with the tears
streaming down his cheeks, made him a marked man, and he
was one of the first soldiers arrested in 1866. He died of heart
disease, a prisoner in Western Australia.
Many of the Fenian soldiers made no effort to disguise their
sympathies and some of them were very reckless. One day in
1865, I met eight six-footers of the Fifth Dragoons, marching in
twos, in close order, with their light canes held as swords, and
all singing "O'Donnell Abu," as they swung into Castle Street
past the Upper Castle Yard, and the infantry guard across the
street standing inside the rails and grinning approvingly. At
the Curragh races in June, 1865, Roantree introduced me to a
lot of soldiers, and he loaded a jaunting car with a group of
them to drive them over to the Camp. Roantree, Dan Byrne of
Ballitore (who worked in one of the canteens) , William Dunphy
of Mountmellick, and I were the only civilians. Among the sol-
diers was Thomas Hassett, a Corkman, who had served in the
"Pope's Brigade," but was then in the Twenty-fourth Foot, and
who was afterwards one of the six men rescued from Western
Australia by the Catalpa expedition. Of their own accord yie
soldiers struck up "The Rising of the Moon," and we tried in
vain to stop them. They continued to sing till the car swung
into the streets of the Camp and there were approving smiles
from scores of soldiers as we passed the doors of the huts.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Roantree was arrested, with several others, on the night the
Irish People was seized — September 15, 1865 — and warrants were
issued for the arrest of Rynd and Baynes, who, being well known
to the detectives, had to keep out of sight. Later both were
arrested. Rynd, against whom there was little evidence, was
released on bail, but Bayne was convicted and sentenced to ten
years' penal servitude. The latter was released in Western Aus-
tralia in 1869 (with John Kenealy and several others) , and went
to San Francisco, where he died. James Rynd died in Boston.
Roantree, shortly after his arrest, was tried and sentenced to
penal servitude for ten years. He was released at the same time
as John O'Leary, Thomas Clarke Luby, O'Donovan Rossa, and a
number of others in 1871, and came to America. After spending
some time in New York he settled in Philadelphia, where he
became a traveller for a large wholesale house. About the year
1900 he returned to Ireland, and secured employment under the
Dublin Corporation. He died in that city in 1918, at the age of 89.
On the night of the seizure of the Irish People several soldiers
came out over the barrack walls to find out what was up and to
convey the news to their comrades inside. They thought there
might be a fight. As a majority of the men on guard at the
barrack gates, and several of the sergeants, were Fenians, they
had no difficulty in getting back, and not a man of them was
punished. For several weeks after the arrests, the work in the
army necessarily was brought to a standstill and new conditions
came into existence.
CHAPTER XXII.
"ORGANIZATION" SYSTEMATIZED IN THE ARMY.
Stephens Appointed Devoy "Chief Organizer of the British
Troops in Ireland" — Assistants Well Qualified for the
Work.
For several weeks after the arrest of Roantree the organiza-
tion in the army was left to drift along without attention. Many
of the men, however, had acquaintances among the members of
the civil organization in the various garrison towns, especially in
Dublin, and some kind of irregular communication was kept up
with the soldiers — enough to let them know that, in spite of the
numerous arrests, the organization was still intact and that the
intention to fight remained.
There was a sharp lookout for Stephens, which made it neces-
sary for him to keep very quiet, but, as long as the head of the
organization remained uncaptured, the spirit of confidence con-
tinued unbroken. For a short time Edward (Ned) Duffy was the
medium of communication between Stephens and the organiza-
tion. Duffy's practice was to interview the men in the back par-
lor of a quiet, very well kept house across the Grand Canal at
Baggot Street Bridge, where a young man of unusual intelligence
and good manners, named Hogan, was manager. On my return
from a trip through southern Kildare and Queens County, on
which I had been sent, I met Duffy there one evening in Octo-
ber, in company with General Halpin, Colonel Kelly, Edmund
O'Donovan and John Ryan of Liverpool. After a preliminary
lecture about stories of dissatisfaction among the men over lack
of preparation, and a rather extravagant expression of his per-
sonal confidence in "The Captain", Duffy handed me a letter,
with "Dev." on the envelope. I opened it and found a document
which I took the risk of preserving; it is in my possession as I
write. I gave it to my eldest sister for safe keeping, and she
sewed it up in her muff, where it remained securely for many
years, and I brought it to America in 1879 on my return from a
trip to Ireland. The document was as follows:
"Thursday, Oct. 26, 1865.
"My Dear Friend:
"There is a lull just now on the part of the enemy, and
we should make the utmost of it. To this end I hereby ap-
point you Chief Organizer of the British troops here in
Ireland. While in this service your allowance will be £3 a
145
146
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
week, but this sum must cover your support, travelling ex-
penses and refreshment to any soldier you may have to
meet. I also authorize you to appoint a staff of eight men to
act under you. Two of these should be civilians and the
other six soldiers. All should be staunch, steady men. Use
your best judgment in their appointment, but make them
rapidly as you can. The allowance to each of the two civil-
ians (your aides) may be from 15s. to £l-10s. a week, accord-
ing to the circumstances and requirements of the men. The
soldiers (unless they be men of superior tact and judgment)
should not be given much money. Five to ten shillings a
week would be amply sufficient for most of them, but, should
you meet with a really clever and reliable man, don't hesi-
tate about allowing him £1 a week. Should you find it wise
to add to the number of your military aides, let me know.
Bearer will give you £6. Send me weekly returns of expenses.
"Yours faithfully,
"J. Stephens.
"P. S. — Send off the man you write about.
"Be very prudent now. You owe me this, to justify the
appointment of so young a man to so responsible a post."
I never drew a salary and never paid one to any of the assis-
tants I appointed. We all subsisted on enough to barely pay our
expenses. The men I appointed were all civilians. I used plenty
of soldiers in the work, but gave none of them any more than an
occasional half crown or shilling, and then only when necessary,
except to William Curry of the 87th. He was an invaluable man,
intelligent, prompt, reliable, always sober, and his expenses never
exceeded £2 a week, and were usually under £1.
I hesitated about undertaking the heavy responsibility, but
Colonel Kelly assured me he would be always ready to give me
direction and advice, so, with the understanding that I would
report to him every day and take his orders, I finally accepted.
As there were warrants out for both of us, the arrangement must
seem to people of the present day to be rather reckless, but to
men with our knowledge of the Irish police and our contempt
for their masters at the Castle, it seemed perfectly feasible then.
And it proved to be so for four months of incessant conflict with
the Government, in which every energy of the officials was put
forth in vain.
I did not make any appointments immediately, and some of
them not for several weeks, but I may as well describe the men
now. Jack Mullen was already on the staff and I kept him on
by Kelly's advice, as he had a wide acquaintance with the men in
the regiments of the Dublin garrison, and through him I was
made known to them. He had an uncle in some position in the
Castle who informed him after we had been working a few
weeks that the police were after him. So, as many of the detec-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
147
tives knew him I allowed him to go over to Liverpool for safety
and I saw him no more. The others were Edward Pilsworth and
Denis Duggan.
Besides these, I was usually accompanied by a group of three
or four stalwart men — all of whom were "wanted" by the police
and could not go home — so as to be ready to resist arrest. The
men most often with me besides Duggan and Pilsworth, were
Matthew O'Neill and William Hampson of Celbridge, a watch-
maker, who worked in Donegan's in Dame Street.
Pilsworth, a slight, but wiry man, was in the London organi-
zation and had come over with a batch of men for the fight
which we all supposed would take place before the year 1865
was out. Pilsworth was the son of an Irish troop sergeant-
major of cavalry, and was born in Birmingham Barracks. He
had a most decided English accent, although he did not drop his
"h's", and it enabled him to avoid detection for a long time. He
went by the name of Williams. He had served with Garibaldi
in Sicily and Naples and, having been brought up among British
soldiers, was a very useful man. When arrested with me he gave
the name of St. Clair, and after his release, in order not to lose
the credit for his conviction for Fenianism, of which he was very
proud, he called himself Edward Pilsworth St. Clair.
Denis Duggan was a Dublin man whose acquaintance I first
made when we were both pupils at School Street Model School.
He was a coachmaker and was working in London when the
Irish People was seized. He belonged to the London Irish Volun-
teers and hurried to Dublin when the news reached him, but he
did a very reckless thing. Determined to come armed, instead
of taking his own rifle he brought one belonging to a comrade
and left him to face the consequences. I believe the comrade was
Michael Lawlor, the sculptor, a cousin of James J. O'Kelly and
nephew of the more famous sculptor of the same name. I knew
the younger Lawlor very well before he left Dublin.
Duggan was a very ingenious man, and he managed to get
the rifle into Dublin by cutting the stock in sections and putting
the pieces under the shelving of his tool chest, securely held by
clamps fastened to the shelves by short screws which left no
marks on the top. Every man coming into Ireland was searched
then. Duggan calmly opened the trunk and stood by while the
detectives were searching it. He lived in Echlin Street, which
runs from James's Street to the Grand Canal Harbor, only a
short distance from Pilsworth's public house, where we were
later arrested.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
That rifle did fine service on the night of March 5, 1867, at
Stepaside and Glencullen, where Patrick Lennon, a very good
judge of such things, assured me Duggan was as cool and col-
lected as a veteran soldier. Another instance of Duggan's in-
genuity was his success in smuggling in to me in Mount joy Prison
in 1866, after he had got out on bail, a whole page of the Free-
man concealed in the scooped out back of a clothes-brush, the
fastening being done with screws deftly put in among the bristles.
I broke a warder's pen knife in unscrewing it, but the stump of
the blade made a fine turnscrew. The paper had a full account
of Stephens' speech at Jones' Wood, New York, which he deliv-
ered on May 15 of that year.
Duggan was one of the men stationed outside the wall on the
night of the Rescue of James Stephens from Richmond Prison,
and later served in the Rescue of the Fenian Military Prisoners
from Western Australia in 1876. Soon after that, he fell into
bad health, returned to Dublin and died there.
O'Neill I knew from the time we met in an Irish class in 1858.
He died in Dublin in 1904.
Hampson, the son of an Englishman who settled in Celbridge,
County Kildare, had charge of that district under Roantree. He
died of yellow fever in Cuba in the early '70's while laying tele-
graph wires.
The most efficient and useful man I had assisting me in the
work was William Curry, a corporal in the 87th, who came over
from Portsmouth towards the end of 1865 with twenty men of the
regiment. They got excited on hearing the news of the arrests
and trials and this detachment was sent as a vanguard, with
the assurance that when the word was given the regiment would
seize a steamer and land on the Irish coast. Curry was the
Centre of the regiment, which was wholly Irish, but, while their
sentiments were all right, Curry, a very prudent man, carefully
selected the men to be sworn in and they numbered only 200. The
rest he knew he could have, but they were rough, reckless fel-
lows whom he thought it better to leave unsworn.
The twenty men of the 87th were a typical lot of Irish soldiers.
They were all powerfully built men, though not all tall. The
shortest period that any of them had served was five years, and
one Clareman named Penn had seen eighteen years' service.
Three years more would retire him on pension. They got thirty
days' furlough each and thirty shillings for thirty days' pay. Out
of this they each paid ten shillings for their passage to Dublin
on the London steamer which called at Portsmouth, Southamp-
ton, Plymouth and Falmouth on its way to Dublin. When their
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
149
furlough had expired and they found that the fight had been
postponed, they decided to remain and we had to provide them
with civilian clothes. We had put them on Is. 6d. a day subsis-
tence money soon after their arrival, and they stood their ground,
ready for any emergency until, one by one, they were all arrested
during the course of the next few months. As not a man of
them turned informer they could only be punished for deser-
tion and making away with their kits. They all got the longest
terms the military law allowed.
Two of them were exceptions to this, Curry and another cor-
poral named Tierney, a Clareman. Curry was convicted on the
evidence of informers from other regiments that he had attended
meetings with me and carried messages to the men in the bar-
racks. He was sentenced to two years and fifty lashes.
A report of the flogging, clipped from the Daily Express, was
smuggled into Mountjoy Prison to P. J. McDonnell in a boiled
potato and, as he was in the next cell to me, he passed me the
clipping. It said that during the flogging Curry never winced
or moved a muscle. When I met him in New York in 1871 and
told him this, he said: "Be japers, John, I had a sixpence between
my teeth."
The spirit and character of these men of the 87th may be
judged from one incident. In getting them civilian clothes we did
not think of shirts. Curry paid them their Is. 6d. a day every
morning, but a few days after the change Gilligan, a stalwart
King's County man, who had served eight years, failed to turn
up at roll call and we feared he had been arrested. Some hours
later he appeared and, in reply to my question, said he had
been "foraging" and pointed to a clean, but unironed white shirt,
which he had on. He explained that he had gone out to Kim-
mage and finding several dry shirts hanging on a line, took one
of them and left his own in its place. "Exchange is no robbery,"
he explained, and then added: "I don't mind takin' me chances
of bein' killed fightin', but, be japers, I don't want to be stood
up agin' a wall an' shot like a dog as a deserter."
I then found that they all wanted to get rid of every vestige
of their military clothing, for the same reason as Gilligan urged.
As the military shirts were very serviceable, the Dublin men
had no objection to wearing them, so they were all exchanged
before night.
While Curry had his uniform he visited the barracks every
day with his furlough in his pocket, carried messages to such
men as I wanted to see, arranged for meetings, ascertained the
strength of the guards and pickets, how many Irishmen were in
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
each and the number of our friends, and did any other work
that was required. He reported to me several times a day and
always accompanied me to meetings. As he was five feet eleven
inches in height and powerfully built, carried a revolver, was a
good collar-and-elbow wrestler and handy with his fists, to say
nothing of his cool courage, his presence at these meetings was
very useful. To arrest a party consisting of Curry, O'Neill,
Hampson, Duggan, Pilsworth, myself and several others, would
require a strong force of police. But Curry was surprised
asleep in bed one night, if I remember rightly, in the house of
Patrick Merrigan, afterwards very well known in New York.
Curry went from New York to Australia in 1877 and I have never
heard from him since.
Corporal Tierney was not arrested until he made an attempt
to kill Warner, the old army pensioner who had drilled the Cork
Fenians and turned informer to save himself. Tierney was sen-
tenced to imprisonment for life and after spending many years
in Spike Island was released, utterly broken in health, and came
to America. He died in New Haven, Conn., and the Clan-na-
Gael of that city, through the efforts of Captain Larry O'Brien,
erected a fine monument over his grave.
Next to John Boyle O'Reilly (with whom I will deal in a sepa-
rate chapter), the most intelligent and best educated of the
Fenian soldiers was Thomas Chambers, who was Centre of the
61st. It was supposed to be an English regiment, but there were
not a hundred men in it who were not Irish and there were 600
Fenians. It was the banner Fenian regiment. Chambers was
born in Kilkenny and had a brother, James, who was a Centre
in the North of England and came over to Dublin before the end
of 1865.
Chambers was arrested with me, tried by court-martial, sen-
tenced to death, and the sentence was commuted to penal servi-
tude for life. He was with me a good deal in Portland and Mill-
bank. He was released with Sergeant McCarthy and John P.
O'Brien, the only remaining Fenian military prisoners in England
in 1878, and was at the breakfast given by Parnell at Morrison's
Hotel in Dublin on January 15th when poor McCarthy dropped
dead. Chambers remained in Dublin for some years after his
release, and I met him at a meeting there in 1879. Soon after
that he came to America, but his health broke down and he died
in the South in the early 'eighties.
John P. O'Brien, as I remember, was born in London of Tip-
perary parents, and he was twenty years of age when he came
over "for the fight" in 1865. His father was a district postmaster
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
151
in London and when the fight was put off in December, 1865, he
did not want to return to London, fearing that his father would
prevent him coming back when needed. So he enlisted in one of
the regiments stationed in Dublin, in order to be on hand when
wanted. He was not on my staff, however. He was convicted
and sentenced to, I believe, fifteen years' imprisonment.
Another very useful man was the Centre of the Third Buffs,
a Tipperary man named Fennessy. He was in the regiment of
Tipperary militia which mutineed some time in the 'fifties, on a
demand to be allowed to retain their trousers, and, like many
others of the mutineers, enlisted in the Line to escape punish-
ment. He also came over from England on furlough and was
useful for carrying messages into the barracks. He was a quiet,
sober, intelligent man.
Sergeant McCarthy I never met until we were both in Port-
land Prison and his health was even then visibly breaking down.
With all these men acting either as regular assistants or as
volunteer aides, I had a very efficient staff, as well as a sturdy
bodyguard, and the work in the army went on with great vigor
until the repeated postponements of the fight made conditions
hopeless, and the best men in the regiments in Dublin and some
in other places were arrested.
CHAPTER XXIII.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
The Outstanding Figure Among the Soldier Fenians — Escaped
from British Penal Colony in Western Australia — Poet and
Patriot.
The most remarkable man among the Fenians in the British
army was by long odds John Boyle O'Reilly, who later became
editor of the Boston Pilot and won fame as a poet in America.
His first poem, "The Old School Clock", was written in Arbor
Hill Military Prison, while he was awaiting trial for Fenianism.
O'Reilly was born at Dowth Castle, on the Meath side of the
Boyne, six miles from Drogheda, on June 28, 1844. The old Castle
had been turned by Viscount Netterville, its owner, into an insti-
tution for widows and orphans, with a National School attached.
William David O'Reilly, John's father, was master of the school.
He gave his son the beginning of a good education which he
completed out in the world later on. At eleven years of age he
became a printer's apprentice on the Drogheda Argus, but after
four years the proprietor died and he was obliged to finish his
apprenticeship on the Guardian in Preston, Lancashire, where
he went to live with a maternal aunt who had married an
English Catholic sea captain named Watkinson. Later he learned
shorthand and became a reporter on the same paper.
In Preston he got his first taste of soldiering in a company of
English Volunteers. Going back to Ireland in 1863, he enlisted
in the Tenth Hussars, then stationed in Dundalk.
O'Reilly's career is so well known to Irishmen everywhere that
it is hardly necessary to go into details here, except as to his
work for Fenianism in the army during four eventful months,
from October, 1865, to February, 1866, when he was arrested. He
was the Centre of the Tenth Hussars.
He was a Fenian before he enlisted, but the statement made
by James Jeffrey Roche in his "Life of John Boyle O'Reilly" that
he joined the army for the purpose of spreading the organiza-
tion among the soldiers is an error. He enlisted because, like
many other Irishmen, he liked soldiering, and the best proof
that he did not have such an intention is found in the fact that
he was more than two years in the service before he did any work
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JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
153
for the movement. I had been working for some weeks on the
regiment before I even knew of his existence and none of my
predecessors had any knowledge of him.
I met O'Reilly first in October, 1865, under circumstances that
were characteristic of the time. In my daily reports to Colonel
Kelly I had informed him that the Tenth Hussars, then quartered
at Island Bridge Barracks, in the southwestern part of Dublin,
was the only regiment with which I was making no progress.
I was anxious to do the best I could with it on account of the
location of the barracks and the fact that in Richmond Barracks,
close by, the Sixty-first and a battalion of the Sixtieth Rifles
were stationed, and were both well organized. These two bar-
racks controlled the roads leading to the Southwest and the
Great Southern and Western Railroad. The men of the Tenth
were mainly English, but there were over a hundred Irishmen
among them and it was the crack light cavalry regiment of the
British army. It was called "The Prince of Wales's Own". Col-
onel Baker, Its commander (afterwards Baker Pasha of the
Turkish army) , was reputed to be the best cavalry officer in the
British service. The few men I had in the Tenth were not of
much account and I could make no headway. This situation was
speedily changed after I met O'Reilly.
At Colonel Kelly's address in Grantham Street one day I met
by appointment a young veterinary surgeon from Drogheda
named Harry Byrne who knew O'Reilly well, and, on account of
his profession, had a wide acquaintance in the Tenth, which had
recently been stationed at Dundalk. He had already told Kelly
that O'Reilly was a member, that he belonged to a much re-
spected family, and was the man for the work in the regiment.
In half an hour Byrne and I were on our way to Island Bridge
on an outside car, which we dismissed some distance away and
went into the barracks. In the barrack square we met a troop
sergeant major whom Byrne knew, a bluff, hearty Englishman
of the best type. He told us that O'Reilly was on picket at the
Royal Barracks. There were heavy pickets of infantry and
cavalry kept in readiness for emergencies at certain points in
Dublin during that period. The Englishman insisted on our
going into the canteen and having a drink and a chat and we
went. He was such a frank, manly fellow that we felt bad at
having to deceive him, but military necessity reconciled us to the
deception. He praised O'Reilly to the skies, said he was the best
young soldier in the regiment, and predicted a great future for
him. "I shouldn't wonder," he said "if in five or six years that
young fellow'd be a troop sawjent majah." And if O'Reilly had
remained a hussar that would have been the end of him.
154 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
We went to the Royal Barracks on the other side of the
Liffey. The sentry at the gate was a soldier of the Eighth Foot, —
"The Eighth King's", I believe they called it — and he gave me a
smile of recognition. He was a Fenian, and another member of
the guard stepped up to me and asked if I was looking for some
of the boys. I told him I wanted to find the picket of the Tenth
Hussars and he directed me to the spot where some men of the
Fifth Dragoon Guards were on stable duty, and they were
nearly all our men. One of them hailed me as I came up; it was
Martin Hogan, one of the six men later rescued in Western
Australia. After a handshake with half a dozen others Hogan
showed us where to go. The hussars of the picket were loung-
ing about, with no officer near them. Byrne went up to a ser-
geant, told him he was a friend of O'Reilly from Drogheda, and
he was at once shown where he was. He was in the stable tight-
ening his saddle girths, getting ready to mount and start off to
the Viceregal Lodge with a despatch to the Lord Lieutenant
from Sir Hugh Rose, Commander of the Forces in Ireland.
In 1890, when O'Reilly died and when my recollection was
much clearer than it is now, I wrote for the Chicago Herald a
description of him as he appeared then and which Roche copied
into his book. It said:
"Byrne had just time to introduce us and O'Reilly and I
to make an appointment for the next evening, when he
brought out his horse, sprang into the saddle and was off.
O'Reilly was then a handsome, lithely built young fellow
of twenty, with the down of a future black moustache on
his lip. He had a pair of beautiful dark eyes that changed
in expression with his varying emotions. He wore the full-
dress dark blue hussar uniform, with its mass of braiding
across the breast, and the busby, with its tossing plume, was
set jauntily on the head and held by a linked brass strap,
catching under the lower lip."
I should have made his age twenty-one, but I wrote from
recollection and in haste. He was so proud of his showy uniform
that he often, as he related in after life, rode out of his way when
acting as a special courier, so that he could pass a shop with a
great plate glass window in which he could see the full reflection
of himself and his horse as he went by.
When I met him the next evening he told me he was often
selected to carry despatches between Sir Hugh Rose and Lord
Wodehouse, who was then Viceroy, and he offered, if we would
arrange a place for him to stop on the way, to let us steam the
despatches open, close them again, and he would then ride on
and deliver them. That showed the bold, daring character of
the man. I at once reported the offer to Colonel Kelly, who said
that at that stage the despatches would hardly contain anything
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL 155
of great importance, that the tampering with them would prob-
ably be at once discovered, and a valuable man sacrificed for
very little information. But he said that later, when important
movements of troops were about to be made, he would avail
himself of O'Reilly's offer. When that time came O'Reilly was a
prisoner and most of the Fenian regiments were gone. But if
the Rising had taken place at the time originally named and
when we were best able to fight, he and all the best Fenians in
the British army would have been ready to answer the call.
I may quote again from the article in the Chicago Herald:
"From that time till the following February, when we were
both arrested within a few days of each other, I saw him al-
most every day. When on guard or picket duty he never
failed to communicate with me, through William Curry — a
furloughed corporal of the Eighty-Seventh Foot, the famous
'Faugh-a-Ballaghs', who could go in and out of the bar-
racks,— every change worth knowing in the location and
strength of the guards and pickets. He brought me some
eighty men to be sworn in, had them divided into two pros-
pective troops, obtained possession of the keys of an unused
postern gate, and had everything ready to take his men,
armed and mounted, out of the barracks at a given signal.
The signal never came, and all his and other men's risks and
sacrifices were thrown away through incompetent and nerve-
less leadership."
In working out his plan for taking out his two troops O'Reilly
made a very good rough map of the section of the city in which
Island Bridge and Richmond Barracks were situated. When he
showed it to me in an upper room of Hoey's public house in
Bridgefoot Street, some of the Eighty-seventh men were present,
and an old soldier named Penn attacked O'Reilly for presumption,
asking him did he think that "these gintlemin" hadn't all of that
kind of thing that they wanted. Unfortunately they had not, but
the veteran's supposition was natural. I had provided myself
long before that with an Ordnance Survey map in sections and
Colonel Kelly had another, but maps were not plentiful among
the Fenians, although they knew the country very well.
Although O'Reilly developed into a poet of considerable ability
in America, he had at that time a good military head. His vanity
about his uniform, his trappings and his horse was a feeling
common to all young soldiers, but his ideas about the capture
of Dublin, and the way to get out of the city with our forces
intact, in case we failed, were all practical. Mere boy as he was,
he believed that the blow ought to be struck in Dublin, where
our organization was strongest and our membership in the Brit-
ish army was largest. The plan of "taking to the hills", which
was afterwards adopted — mainly because the organization in the
army had been broken up — did not appeal to him at all. During
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
the four months of his activity his zeal was unflagging. He
turned up for work every evening that he was off duty and spent
a good deal of time with me, outside of the gatherings where
work was done, discussing plans. These talks were mostly car-
ried on while walking along unfrequented streets.
O'Reilly was arrested on February 14, 1866, and as he was led
across the barrack square, Colonel Baker, of whom O'Reilly was
a great favorite, was passing. The Colonel shook his fist at him
in anger and said: "Damn you, O'Reilly, you have ruined the
finest regiment in Her Majesty's service." When the Colonel was
testifying before the court-martial later on, that O'Reilly had
failed to give him any information of an intended mutiny,
O'Reilly asked him: "What character do I bear in the regiment?"
The Colonel replied: "A good character." Captain Barthorp of
O'Reilly's own troop, who was a member of the court-martial,
swore that he knew the prisoner for three years and his char-
acter was good. Adjutant Russell of the Tenth Hussars (after-
wards well known as Lord Odo Russell) testified that his char-
acter was good "during his whole three years and thirty-one
days of service." Captain Russell afterwards succeeded in hav-
ing O'Reilly's sentence of imprisonment for life commuted to
twenty years, on the ground of his youth. The sentence had
originally been death, but as in all such cases, it had been changed
to life imprisonment.
Captain Whelan of the Sixty-first, an Irish Catholic, who was
the prosecutor at the courtsmartial, was an expert suborner of
perjury. It was he who secured all the informers except the two
willing ones, by the infamous methods which prevail in Irish
conspiracy cases. He went from cell to cell in Arbor Hill Mili-
tary Prison, where the soldiers charged with Fenianism were on
starvation diet, telling each man that the others had all turned
informers and that I had supplied to the Castle a list of all the
men I had sworn in. Several of them broke down and he schooled
and drilled them in the evidence they were to give, turning mere
taproom conversations, with outsiders present, into "meetings"
and making them put the word "Fenian" in when necessary — a
word that was never once used in the talks between the soldiers
and the civilian organizers.
This "Irish gentleman" had told every arrested man of the
Tenth that O'Reilly had informed on them all and pleaded with
them to save themselves by telling all they knew. He had fre-
quently pleaded with O'Reilly, and when he came on the eve of
the trial to make his last appeal to the man about whom he had
lied so cruelly and asked him to save himself by selling his com-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
157
rades, he was accompanied, as usual, by a warder. The warder
was an old soldier and an Englishman. As Whelan got the last
refusal from O'Reilly, he (Whelan) left the cell with a threat
of the dire consequences that would follow. The old soldier,
while Whelan was still there, said: "Yes, O'Reilly, you'd better
do as the Captain says." Then as he was closing the cell door,
he added in a low, but stern voice: "And, damme, I'd like to
choke you with my own hands if you do."
The worst of the informers against O'Reilly, as against most of
the other soldier Fenians, was a private in the Fifth Dragoon
Guards, named Patrick Foley, who hailed from Waterford. He
was really a spy who went into the movement for the deliberate
purpose of betraying it. He was driven out of the Army later
by the dog's life he had to lead. The old warder referred to above
had the soldier's point of view about spies. Every one of the
military informers, to save them from incessant persecution and
assault, had to be transferred to other regiments and when dis-
covered again were driven out, the Englishmen joining with the
Irish in making their lives a burden to them. In the next chap-
ter I cite how Foley was befriended by O'Reilly years later. But
he died in misery soon after.
The mention of this particular informer reminds me of a
namesake of his, William Foley, also a Waterford man, who was
one of our best and most faithful Fenian men in the English
army. Bill Foley, who had become a victim of heart disease, was
out on ticket-of-leave when John J. Breslin arrived in Western
Australia to rescue the military prisoners and he sent the poor
fellow to New York. He died in St. Vincent's Hospital after his
rescued comrades had arrived on the Catalpa, and was given a
fine public funeral.
The courtsmartial must be dealt with in a separate chapter.
After conviction the Fenian soldiers were removed to Mount joy
Prison, Dublin, thence to Pentonville, later to Millbank (both in
London) , where they finished their "probation" or separate
period of imprisonment. Then they were removed to the "public
works" prison at Chatham, then to Portsmouth and later to
Dartmoor. These frequent removals suggest fear on the part of
the Government of attempts at rescue of the soldier prisoners by
their friends outside. In Chatham, O'Reilly and two others actu-
ally made an attempt to escape and were severely punished.
In October, 1867, all the convicted soldiers except McCarthy,
Chambers and O'Brien, were removed to Portland Prison, from
which, with a number of civilian prisoners, they were sent to the
Penal Colony of Western Australia on the old captured French
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
ship, the Houguemont. On January 10, 1868, they landed at Fre-
mantle, West Australia. Of O'Reilly's life in the penal settle-
ment, when on a "road party", I will record one incident. For being
late returning to the camp he was sentenced to six months' soli-
tary confinement. The overseer held in his hand a letter with
black borders on it and said: "O'Reilly, here is a letter for you."
O'Reilly said, "Thank you," and held out his hand. The official
looked at him, evidently enjoying the torture he was inflicting,
and then said: "You will get it in six months." The letter an-
nounced the death of his mother, whom he knew from the last
news he had received to be very sick. But I must say from some
experience of English prison officials that this brute was not an
average specimen.
The thrilling story of his escape, by the aid of Father McCabe
and two Irish-Australians named Maguire, to the American
whaler Gazelle, commanded by Captain David R. Gifford and
having on board as one of the mates Captain Henry C. Hathaway,
who saved him from recapture in an English port in the Indian
Ocean, is too long to repeat here. I shall merely append the fol-
lowing official notice of the escape from the Police Gazette of the
Penal Colony:
"Absconders.
"20 — John B. O'Reilly, registered No. 9843; arrived in the
colony per convict ship Houguemont in 1868; sentenced to
twenty years 9th July, 1886. Description — Healthy appear-
ance; present age 25 years; 5 feet iy2 inches high, black hair,
brown eyes, oval visage, dark complexion: an Irishman. Ab-
sconded from Convict Road Party, Bunbury, on the 18th of
February, 1869."
After an eventful voyage O'Reilly landed in Philadelphia on
November 23, 1869, destined to go through some hardships and
undergo many disappointments — chiefly owing to the demoral-
ized condition of the Fenian movement brought about by the
Split. He went as a correspondent for the Boston Pilot to the
last Raid on Canada in 1870, took part in one of the fights,
and then became editor of that paper.
Further reference to his distinguished career in America would
be out of place here. I shall merely add that he died in 1890,
as he had lived, true to the Irish National Cause. For three or
four years after his arrival in America he felt some resentment
against the "American" wing of the Fenian organization which
found expression in editorials in the Pilot and in private letters
which have since been published. That resentment was shared
for a time by the released Fenian prisoners who arrived in New
York in 1871, but in the latter case it speedily disappeared when
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
159
they came to realize the entire good faith of the men on both
sides in the disastrous Split. In O'Reilly's case it ended with
his intimate knowledge of the plans of the Clan-na-Gael to lib-
erate his fellow-prisoners in Australia.
Although O'Reilly ceased in 1870 (at the request of the Arch-
bishop of Boston) to be a member of the Clan-na-Gael, he
was consulted by its leaders in every important emergency, from
the Rescue of the military prisoners in 1876 to the starting of the
"New Departure" in 1878, and through the whole course of the
Land League. I have hundreds of his letters, written during all
these years up to a short time before his death which fully prove
this assertion and flatly contradict the statements of latter-day
renegades that John Boyle O'Reilly had ceased to believe in real
Irish Nationality, or was not ready to take a soldier's part in its
accomplishment if the opportunity should come.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SOLDIERS ON TRIAL.
courtsmartial held in royal barracks, dublin, in 1866 — most
of Military Prisoners Told Only Enough to Save Them-
selves— Sentences of Death Commuted.
Fenianism was in a bad way in Ireland in 1866. The chief
features of the year were the courtsmartial on the arrested sol-
diers. They were held in the Royal Barracks (now Collins Bar-
racks) in the middle of the Summer and were intended to destroy
the organization in the British army and strike terror into the dis-
affected soldiers who were at that time the chief hope of the
movement. They did not succeed in striking terror, but between
them and the removal of the good regiments the soldiers' organi-
zation was effectually broken up and shattered.
Edward Duffy, who was left in charge of the movement in the
absence of Stephens and Col. Kelly in America, had no money
to pay counsel to defend the men, while the funds of the Ladies'
Committee (which had paid for the defense of the civilian
prisoners) were exhausted and large sums stolen by Richard
Pigott, through whose paper, the Irishman, they were collected.
Everything that happened was of a depressing character and it
is a wonder, under the circumstances, that the organization
survived. But it did.
A full report of the courtsmartial would require a separate
volume, but, as the evidence against the soldiers was practically
the same in every case, I need only give here the trial of John
Boyle O'Reilly (with the correction of a few errors) from
James Jeffrey Roche's Life of O'Reilly.
I was in Mountjoy Prison, awaiting trial, for over a year
after February, 1866, and in English jails for the next four,
so I was not in a position to get the facts personally. Roche's
book is now out of print, but many copies are still to be found
in second hand book shops in Boston and New York. It ought to
be read by those who wish to acquaint themselves with the Irish
situation during a most interesting period, although there are
many errors in it, on account of the author's desire to heap
praise on the man he worshipped.
O'Reilly's trial began on June 27, 1866, the eve of his twenty-
second birthday, and went on for several days. The charge
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL 161
against him was: "Having at Dublin, in January, 1866, come to
the knowledge of an intended mutiny of Her Majesty's Forces in
Ireland, and not giving information of said intended mutiny to
his commanding officer."
The courtmartial was constituted as follows: President, Col-
onel Sawyer, Sixth Dragoon Guards; Prosecutor, Captain Whelan,
Eighth Regiment, assisted by Mr. Landy, Q. C. The Judge Advo-
cate was advised by Mr. Johnson. The prisoner was defended
by Mr. O'Loughlen, advised by Mr. John Lawless, solicitor.
The other officers of the courtmartial were: Lieut. Col.
Maunsell, Major Drew and Captain Gladstone, Seventy-fifth
Foot; Captain Wallace and Lieut. Caryvell, Ninety-second Gordon
Highlanders; Captain Skinner, Military Train; Captain Kingston
and Lieutenant Garnett, Fifth Dragoon Guards; Captain
Barthorp, Tenth Hussars; Captain Telford and Lieutenant Meade,
Sixtieth Rifles; Captain Taylor, Eighty-eight Foot, Connaught
Rangers; Captain Fox and Ensign Parkinson, Sixty-first Foot.
O'Reilly's fellow-prisoners at that time were: Color-Sergeant
Charles McCarthy, Fifty-third Foot; Privates Patrick Keating,
Fifth Dragoon Guards; Michael Harrington, Thomas Darragh,
Fifty-third Foot; and Captain James Murphy, who was charged
with having deserted from the camp at Aldershot, whereas he
was fighting for the Union in West Virginia as an officer in the
Federal Army, and previous to the Civil War had been a sergeant
in the American Regular Army.
The prisoner (O'Reilly) pleaded "not guilty". Captain
Whelan, the prosecutor, opened the case as follows:
"The enormity of the offense with which the prisoner is
charged is such that it is difficult to find language by which
to describe it. It strikes at the root of all military discipline,
and, if allowed to escape the punishment which it entails,
would render her Majesty's forces, who ought to be the
guardians of our lives and liberty, and the bulwark and pro-
tection of the Constitution under which we live, a source of
danger to the state and all its loyal citizens and subjects,
and her Majesty's faithful subjects would become the prey
and victims of military despotism, licentiousness, and vio-
lence. Our standing army would then be a terror to the
throne, a curse, not a blessing, to the community; but at the
same time, as is the gravity of the offense, so in proportion
should the evidence by which such a charge is to be sus-
tained, be carefully and sedulously weighed. It will be for
you, gentlemen, to say whether the evidence which will be
adduced before you, leaves upon your mind any reasonable
doubt of the prisoner's guilt."
The prosecutor, in continuation, said that evidence would be
laid before them to show that the prisoner was an active mem-
ber of the Fenian conspiracy, and that he had endeavored to
induce other soldiers to join it.
162
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
The first witness called was Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald of the
Tenth Hussars. He said:
I know the prisoner. I know Hoey's public house in
Bridgefoot Street. I was in it in the month of November,
1865, with the prisoner. He brought me there. I was intro-
duced by the prisoner to a man named Devoy. There were
then present, Tierney, Rorreson, Bergin, and Sinclair of the
Tenth Hussars.
Prosecutor: Was there any conversation in presence of
the prisoner? If so, state what it was.
Prisoner: I object, sir, to that question. It relates to a
conversation previous to the date of the charge, and can
have no reference to it.
The court ruled that the evidence was admissible, and the
question was put.
Witness: Prisoner introduced me to Devoy and said:
"This is Corporal Fitzgerald," and I spoke to him. Devoy
said O'Reilly had spoken to him several times about me, and
said he should like to get me. We three sat down together
and I asked Devoy who was carrying on this affair. He said
Stephens. I asked, were there any arms or ammunition. He
said there was, and they were getting lots every day from
America. I asked who were to be their officers. He said there
would be plenty of officers. He said it was so carried on that
privates did not know their non-commissioned officers, nor
they their officers. Devoy then left the room and the pris-
oner went after him. After a few minutes prisoner came and
told me that Devoy wanted to speak to me. I went down to
the yard and found Devoy there. He said, "I suppose O'Reilly
has told you what I want with you."
Prisoner: I respectfully object, sir. What the witness now
states to have taken place, was not in my presence.
Court decided that the answer should be given.
Witness: I said that I did not know. He said that it was
for the purpose of joining them he wanted me, and that there
was an oath necessary to be taken. I said I would not take
the oath, and he then said that he would not trust any man
that did not take the oath. We then returned upstairs. Noth-
ing further took place.
President: What did you mean by using the words, "This
business"?
Witness: I meant the Fenian conspiracy. When I went
upstairs I saw the prisoner, who bade me good-night. The
next time I saw him was one evening I met him in town com-
ing from the barracks. Some arrests took place that day,
and I said, "This business is getting serious." He said it was,
and that my name had been mentioned at a meeting a few
nights before. I asked what meeting, and he said a mili-
tary meeting. I asked who mentioned my name, and he said
he did not know exactly, but that it was a man of the Fifth
Dragoon Guards. He added, "If you come home to-night I
will take you to a similar meeting." I gave him no decided
answer. I afterwards met him in the barracks. This all oc-
curred before the meeting at Hoey's, of which I stated. When
I met him in the barracks he asked me was I going out. I
replied that I was. He said, "Will you meet me at the sign
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
163
of the 'Two Soldiers'?" I said yes, and went there and
waited until O'Reilly came in. He called for some drink, and
after we drank we left the house, but came back again to get
my gloves, and he said, "I want to introduce you to a per-
son." I said that I had no time and should go, but he said,
"I shall not detain you a minute." I then went with him to
Hoey's public house. It was on that occasion that I had
the interview with Devoy of which I have given evidence.
Here the court adjourned for half an hour. On its reas-
sembling Corporal Fitzgerald continued his testimony:
The conversation of which I have last spoken took place
either toward the end of November or the beginning of De-
cember, 1865. Prisoner never told me the object of the mili-
tary meetings of which he spoke. I know Pilsworth's public
house, James Street. I met prisoner in that house on the
13th of January, 1866. There were with him Denny, Mul-
larchy, Hood, Loftus, Crosby, and Sinclair, all Tenth Hussars,
and two deserters from Fifth Dragoon Guards. They were
in civilian clothes. There was a man named Williams pres-
ent, and also Devoy. On that occasion I had no conversa-
tion with O'Reilly, nor with any other person in his hearing.
I never had any further conversation with the prisoner about
Fenianism.
To the Court:
Prisoner never asked me the result of my conversation
with Devoy.
On cross-examination by the prisoner, witness said:
When I was in Hoey's public house there were no soldiers
of any other regiment but the Tenth Hussars present. That
was the only time I met the prisoner at Hoey's. It was a few
days after the conversation which took place when I met
the prisoner coming from the barracks, that he introduced
me to Devoy. I am twelve years in the army. The prisoner
was in the army only three years.
To the Court:
I made no report to my commanding officer of my con-
versation with Devoy or the meeting at Pilsworth's. I never
took the Fenian oath.
The next witness, Private McDonald, Tenth Hussars, testified:
I know Pilsworth's house. I was there about Christmas
last with the prisoner. I went with him to the house. There
were other persons there but I cannot say who they were.
There were some civilians, but I did not know their names.
Since then I heard that Devoy was one of them. The pris-
oner did not introduce me to any one on that occasion. Any
drink the soldiers had they paid for themselves. There
was no conversation relating to Fenianism in the presence of
the prisoner.
Here the President deemed it advisable to give the witness a
hint that his evidence was not satisfactory:
President: Remember that you are on your oath.
Witness: Prisoner was sitting near me for a quarter of an
hour or more; he was not far away from me. He was sitting
alongside me, close as one person sits to another. I knew
164
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
prisoner before that night. I had some conversation with
O'Reilly while he was sitting by me. I cannot now tell what
it was about, but it was not about Fenianism.
Devoy was not sitting near me that night; he was sitting
at the same table, but I did not speak to him, nor he to me.
I know Fortune's public house in Golden Lane. I have been
once in that house with O'Reilly, but I cannot say in what
month. It was after Christmas, I think. There were some
civilians and soldiers there; the soldiers were infantry men.
Devoy was one of the civilians, but I knew no one else's name.
Here the President again interjected a threatening hint:
President: Is it impossible to know an infantry man's
name?
Witness: I did not know their names.
President: What regiments did they belong to?
Witness: Some of Sixty-first, some of Eighty-seventh;
there were no other cavalrymen but prisoner and myself. The
prisoner did not introduce me to any one on that occasion.
We were in Fortune's for an hour and a half. I had no con-
versation with the prisoner on that occasion; the people who
were there were talking to themselves and I did not hear any
conversation that night. Some of the civilians treated me to
some drink. Devoy treated both me and the prisoner. I have
met a man known by the name of Davis. He was not in
Fortune's that night. Devoy, prisoner, and myself all drank
together that night. After leaving Fortune's we went to
Doyle's public house. Devoy came with two other civilians
and some infantry soldiers. I was in Doyle's from half-past
eight until after nine. In Doyle's we were again treated to
drink by the civilians and by Devoy; it was he asked us to go
there. O'Reilly was in the room when he asked me to do
so, but I could not say how near he was to us when Devoy
was speaking. I think prisoner might have heard Devoy
speaking. When Devoy asked us to go to Doyle's he said it
was quieter than Fortune's. In Doyle's we were not exactly
sitting together, there were some civilians between me and
Devoy. I do not know their names.
Here the Court adjourned to next morning.
McDonald's examination resumed:
When I was in Doyle's, prisoner was not sitting; he was
standing between me and Devoy. He was in front of me. I
had no conversation with the prisoner or with any person
in his hearing. I was with the prisoner in Barclay's public
house about a fortnight after I was in Doyle's with him.
There were some soldiers and civilians there. Devoy was
there. I don't know any other names, but I know their faces.
They were the same men who had been at Doyle's. We re-
mained at Barclay's from seven till nine o'clock. On that
occasion I had no conversation with the prisoner, I had no
conversation in presence of prisoner. I went to Barclay's
with John O'Reilly. The next public house I was in with
him was Hoey's, in Bridgefoot Street, about a week after. I
went there with prisoner. Same civilians were there that I
met before, and some infantry soldiers. Prisoner did not re-
main; he went away after I went into the house. I had no
conversation with O'Reilly that night. I afterwards, in the
same month, went with prisoner to Bergin's, James Street;
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
165
remained there from half -past eight to quarter-past nine;
did not know any persons present, they were all strangers;
there were four infantry soldiers, one of them, I think, of
the Fifty-third. Prisoner was there the whole time; there
was no conversation between prisoner and those present.
There was singing.
President: No conversation!
Witness: None.
President: Public houses must be mortal slow places ac-
cording to your account.
Witness: Singing was in presence and hearing of pris-
oner. Prisoner did not join in the singing; he was sitting
down; we were both drinking some beer. Some civilians asked
us to drink, but we treated ourselves. Prisoner told me that
he belonged to the Fenian Brotherhood in Cahir. He told
me so in conversation as we were coming down from Island
Bridge Barracks, in April, twelve months ago.
Cross-examined by Prisoner:
At Pilsworth's there were three or four sitting at the same
table with us and Devoy. When I said there was no conver-
sation between me and the prisoner at Fortune's I meant no
conversation about Fenianism. When Devoy asked me to go
to Doyle's, prisoner might not have heard him do so. We
went upstairs at Barclay's. When I said I had no conversa-
tion with the prisoner at Hoey's, I meant none about Fenian-
ism. I think I saw Corporal Fitzgerald at Hoey's one night,
but I can't tell the date. I never was in company with Fitz-
gerald at Hoey's public house; it is over twelve months and
more since the Tenth Hussars were quartered in Cahir; I had
no conversation with prisoner in Pilsworth's about Fenianism.
Strange civilians often asked me to take a drink in public
houses. I never was a Fenian. The Tenth Hussars were
quartered in Cahir for nine months.
To the Court:
The prisoner told me who Devoy was in Pilsworth's. I
have known the prisoner since he enlisted, three years ago.
It was in Pilsworth's I met the man called Davis, that was in
January; I never saw him before or since. I cannot recollect
the subjects of which we talked in the various public houses.
To the Prisoner:
Was not in Hoey's when Fitzgerald was there. I cannot
tell prisoner's motive in asking me to go to the various pub-
lic houses with him. In Fortune's there were civilians pres-
ent. We left it to go to Doyle's, as we did not like to talk be-
fore them. There was nobody in the room at Doyle's when
we went in. There were seven or eight of us came from For-
tune's to Doyle's. I do not know who the civilians were that
were left behind.
President: Why were you so confidential with some of
the civilians you met at Fortune's for the first time, and not
with all? And what was the mysterious conversation about?
Witness: It was the civilians proposed to go to Doyle's
and it was they who held the conversation. I do not re-
member any of the songs that were sung at Bergin's. Davis
was a low-sized man whose hair was cut like a soldier's.
When the prisoner told me to go to the public houses at
night, he used to say, "Go to such a house and you will meet
John there, and tell him I am on duty."
166
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
President: Who was John?
Witness: Devoy.
President: Then Devoy was a great friend of the pris-
oner?
Witness: He appeared to be.
President: Now answer a direct question: Were the
songs sung Fenian songs?
Witness: No, sir; they were not.
Prisoner: Were the songs chiefly love songs?
Witness: I don't know.
Prisoner: Did I ever tell you Devoy was an old friend
of my family?
Witness: No, he did not. John O'Reilly never spoke to
me about Fenianism, and I never heard Fenian songs in his
company.
President: Recollect what you say: Did you not swear
that prisoner told you he was a Fenian?
Witness: He said he was one at Cahir.
President: How do you know what a Fenian song is?
Witness: I don't know. I suppose they are Irish songs.
Prisoner: Did you not state to the President that I told
you I had been a member of the Fenian Brotherhood while I
was at Cahir?
Witness: Yes, that you had been a Fenian at Cahir.
The unprejudiced reader, accustomed to the rigid impartiality
of an American court, will be surprised at the hardly concealed
hostility of this courtmartial President toward his prisoner.
Private MacDonald's testimony is so favorable to the accused
that it does not please the Court at all. The President accord-
ingly reminds him that he is "under oath", sneers at his refusal
to "identify" men whom he does not know, and makes it gener-
ally clear to succeeding witnesses that evidence tending to prove
the prisoner's innocence is not of the kind wanted in that court.
The next witness was Private Denis Denny, Tenth Hussars:
I remember the evening of the 1st January, last. I was
in the "Two Soldiers" public house with the prisoner. He
told me that if I went to Hoey's with him he would show me
the finest set of Irishmen I ever saw in my life. We went
there and found a number of civilians assembled. The pris-
oner, after some time, took me out of the room and told me
that the Fenians were going to beat the English army and
make this country their own. He asked me to take an oath
to join the Fenians. I answered that I had already taken
an oath to serve my queen and country and that was enough
for me. I then came down and went into the yard and he
asked me to be a Fenian. I told him no. He then went away
and a civilian came and said —
Prisoner: I object to anything being put in evidence rela-
tive to a conversation at which I was not present.
Court adjourned for half an hour to consider the objection.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
167
On its reassembling, Private Denny continued:
After returning upstairs prisoner was there and I saw him.
I had no conversation with him. I met O'Reilly in Island
Bridge Barracks about a week before I was in Hoey's with
him. I had then no conversation with him.
Cross-examined by Prisoner:
I am eight years in the Tenth Hussars. I had spoken be-
fore that evening with the prisoner, but nothing about
Fenianism. I cannot say at what period of the day on the
first of January this took place, but it was in the evening,
about seven or eight, I think. There was nobody but the
prisoner with me when I went to Hoey's. Lance-Corporal
Fitzgerald was not in our company. I never, so far as I
know, was in Fitzgerald's company at Hoey's. We went back
to the "Two Soldiers" that evening by ourselves. We went
back to have a glass of beer. I had been drinking before
that evening. I was arrested at Island Bridge Barracks and
confined in the regiment cells at Richmond Barracks. I was
taken on duty to Dublin Castle in aid of the civil power.
Prisoner withdrew this last question.
Witness: I made no report to my superior officers of
v/hat took place at Hoey's before my arrest. I was arrested
on the 5th of March. I made a statement of what took place
before I was transferred to Richmond barracks. I was ar-
rested on a charge of Fenianism and was for two days in the
cells at Island Bridge, during which time I was visited by
Provost-Sergeant Delworth. He did not tell me what I was
charged with. It was told to me by my commanding officer
on 5th of March, when I was arrested. I did not know
O'Reilly was arrested until he spoke to me through the wall
of the cells; that was the first time I knew he was arrested.
Sergeant Delworth came to visit me, but I cannot say if it
was before then that prisoner spoke through the wall to
me. I was only once at Hoey's public house that I am aware
of — that was on 1st of January, 1866. I made no statement
to the provost-sergeant at all. I made none while in the
cells. I swear that the conversation at Hoey's took place on
1st January, 1866.
By the Court:
Before prisoner told you that the Fenians were going to
beat the English army out of the country and make it free,
had there been no conversation about Fenianism in presence
of the prisoner?
Witness: No.
President: What reason had you for not reporting this
conversation?
Witness: I did not wish to get myself or anyone else
into trouble by doing so.
The next witness was Private John Smith, Tenth Hussars:
I was in Hoey's with prisoner some time after Christmas,
about 1st January, 1866. I went there by myself; no one took
me. When I went there I was directed into a room where
I saw the prisoner. Room was full of soldiers playing cards.
There were some civilians there, but I knew none of them but
O'Reilly. I since learnt that a man named Doyle, of the
Sixty-first, was there. I saw him just now outside this room
Prisoner introduced me as a friend to a civilian.
168
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Here Court adjourned to reassemble next morning, when
Private Smith continued his evidence:
I left the room with the civilian and he spoke to me.
The prisoner objected to the question and the objection was
allowed.
Witness: I had some conversation with the civilian, but
I do not know if the prisoner was near enough to hear it.
After I left the room with the prisoner he said the move-
ment had been going on some time, but he did not say what
movement. After that he returned into the room, and when
I went back I found him there. There was no conversation
louder than your breath among those who were in the
room. When I left the room with the civilian he asked me
to do so. When I left the room I went to the back of the
house with him, but the prisoner did not come out at all
while we were there. It was on the lobby that the prisoner
told me that he had known of the movement for some time.
That was said before I went into the yard with the civilian.
There was no one else but the civilian present at the time
with us. The observation was made in the course of conver-
sation between me and the civilian. We were all standing
on the lobby at the time.
President: What was the conversation about, at the time
the observation was made?
Prisoner: I beg to object to that question, sir. The wit-
ness has already said that he cannot say whether I heard the
conversation or not.
The Judge-Advocate said that the question was a legal one.
The prisoner had introduced the civilian to the witness and the
conversation took place when the three were standing within a
yard of one another. The observation was part of the conver-
sation.
Witness: I cannot say what the conversation was about.
It was the civilian that asked me to go down to the yard. I
don't know whether prisoner left before he asked me to go.
About three days after, I met the prisoner at Walshe's pub-
lic house. No one took me there. The house was full of sol-
diers. I did not know any of the civilians, but there were
some men of my regiment there.
President: Do you know the names of any of the
soldiers?
Witness: I did, but I cannot now recollect what their
names were.
Prisoner: I think that the witness said, sir, that Walshe's
is a singing saloon.
President: Is it a public house or a music hall exclu-
sively?
Witness: It is both; none of the civilians present had
been in Hoey's when I was there; the prisoner told me that
he wanted to see me the next night at Pilsworth's public
house; he said that he wanted to see some friends and to
bring me to them; I met him as he appointed; there were
two of the Sixty-first there when we got to Pilsworth's,
neither of whose names I know; there was nobody else there
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
169
during the time we stopped; the prisoner and I had some
conversation, but I forget what it was; we left the room
shortly after; the only conversation that took place was that
we asked each other to drink; O'Reilly came away with me,
and we went to Hoey's; it was the prisoner who asked me to
go there; he said, "Perhaps we will meet the friends who
promised to meet us at Pilsworth's"; he told me that some
of them were the same that we had to meet at Hoey's before;
on our way he spoke about different men who used to meet
him at Hoey's; he told me that those he was in the habit
of meeting there were Fenian agents, and men from America,
who had been sent here to carry on business; that is the pur-
port of what the prisoner said; nothing else that I can recol-
lect passed between us; the prisoner told me the business
the American agents came to carry on; Fenian business, he
said, of course.
President: Why, "of course"? You give us credit for know-
ing more than we do.
Witness : When we got to Hoey's we met the same civilian
that we had met there before, and some more strangers; we
stayed in Hoey's about three-quarters of an hour; I had no
conversation there with the prisoner; we separated, I to play
cards, and he to talk with some civilians; there was none but
ordinary conversation going on; when we left Hoey's we went
back to Pilsworth's; a civilian asked us both to go to Pils-
worth's along with some other soldiers; some civilians were
there, Americans, I think; I cannot remember what the con-
versation was about; it was no louder than a whisper; when
we left we called into a public house near the barracks; we
had some talk about the civilians we had left.
President: It is not about the civilians you are asked,
but about the conversation.
Witness: I met prisoner without any appointment in Bar-
clay's public house in James's Street in about a week; there
were some soldiers and civilians there. Among the soldiers
was Private Foley, of the Fifth Dragoon Guards. The civilians
were those I had met at Hoey's. I had no conversation with
the prisoner. I left Barclay's first that night. At Barclay's
the prisoner was sitting at a table with some soldiers and
civilians. I had seen some of the civilians before at Hoey's,
I do not know the names of the civilians I met at Hoey's.
The prisoner never told me the object of "the movement".
O'Reilly never spoke to me about "the movement", except
what he said at Pilsworth's and at Hoey's.
Cross-examined by the Prisoner:
The night I went to Hoey's and Pilsworth's was, I think,
in January. I cannot say what time in January. It might
have been in February. I cannot say. I know Lance-Cor-
poral Fitzgerald; he is in my troop. I know Private Denny,
Tenth Hussars; he is in my troop. I cannot say if I was in
his company on New Year's night; I spent that night partly
in Mount Pleasant Square and partly at the "Bleeding
Horse" in Camden Lane. I am not able to say whether I
ever saw Denny at Hoey's. I was speaking to him fifteen
minutes ago; I am not able to say if I spoke to him to-day or
yesterday, about the trial; I did speak to him about it; I have
spoken to him about his evidence or he to me. I don't know
which. It was after I read the paper and I don't think any-
one heard us.
170
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Prisoner: Were you by yourself? ... If the Deputy
Judge Advocate would be kind enough to read the last two
questions and replies.
The questions and replies were read over.
Prisoner: Do you not know whether you and Denny were
by yourselves?
President: You must know, in a matter that only oc-
curred fifteen minutes ago.
Witness: I only spoke to him as we were coming across
here at two o'clock. When I was speaking to Denny, there
were some other men in the room, but I cannot say if we were
by ourselves.
President: That makes the thing worse. When did you
read the newspaper — this morning? Did you talk to Denny
then about the evidence?
Witness: About nine o'clock, when I was preparing to
come here, I might have spoken to him. The paper was read.
I spoke to him at the bottom of the stairs. There were other
men in the room at the time. I again spoke to him when
coming here at two o'clock. I can read "some" print, but not
writing. I have never tried to read a paper. It was Denny
who read the paper this morning; he read it out for me.
President: What paper was it?
Witness: The paper in Sackville Street.
President: That is the Irish Times.
Capt. Whelan: Oh no, it is the Freeman's Journal!
Witness: When Denny read the paper, there were two
men present; it was after this we had the conversation about
the evidence.
Here the court adjourned, and having reconvened on the fol-
lowing day, Private Denis Denny was recalled and examined rela-
tive to a statement made by Private Smith, the previous wit-
ness, that they had a conversation the previous day concerning
the evidence he had given.
Witness: I had no conversation yesterday about the evi-
dence with Private Smith.
To the Prosecutor:
I was not aware that I read the paper yesterday in pres-
ence of Smith. He may have been there when I was reading
it. I have no knowledge of having had any conversation with
anybody about the evidence of Smith. Before I was recalled
into court I had no conversation with anyone relative to the
evidence I had given previously. I am not aware that I had
any conversation with Private Smith with reference to my
evidence. I read a paper yesterday morning. I would not
swear what men were present. I cannot say if Smith was in
the room when I read it.
To the President:
I do not recollect a man who was in the room.
Prisoner: With your leave, sir, I would wish to ask Private
Denny a few questions in the absence of Private Smith.
President: Leave the room, Smith.
t rFaHVatTetDe,n^ to. Prlsoner: I did not buy the paper that
I read. I took it out of Private Robert Good's bed.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
171
President: We have decided, prisoner, not to put these
questions yet. You will reserve them.
Prisoner: Very well, sir.
President (to witness) : Were there any persons in the
room?
Witness: Four or five.
President: Were you reading aloud?
Witness: No, sir; I cannot read aloud, because I have to
spell the words.
President: Have you had no conversation with anyone
about Smith since you read the paper?
Witness: I spoke to Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald, I now
recollect, about Smith.
President: What did you say about him?
Witness: I was talking to him about the time Smith and
I were arrested. He might have been in the room when the
paper was reading, but no one read aloud when I was in the
room.
President: What did you and Smith talk about yester-
day?
Witness: I did not talk to him yesterday, unless I might
have spoken to him outside the door, while we were waiting.
President: If Private Smith swore yesterday that you had
told him your previous evidence, would it be true?
Witness: No, sir.
Private Smith (recalled) . The two Sixty-first men we met
at Pilsworth's did not come to Hoey's. Private Denny never
spoke to me about Fenianism. I have often played cards for
drink in public houses. When the prisoner introduced me
to the civilian at Hoey's it was as a friend of his in the regi-
ment. My regiment turned out for the field yesterday at
half -past-seven. It was about nine o'clock when Denny made
out the paper for me.
Court: If Denny swore that he did not read the paper
aloud, would he be swearing what was true?
Witness: I say again that Denny read the paper aloud; if
he did not I could not hear him.
President: You must answer "Yes" or "no".
Witness: It would not be true, sir.
To the Court:
I have heard Denny reading the newspaper aloud on other
occasions; I do not know what part of the paper Denny
read, but it was about this trial; when speaking to Denny
yesterday it was about the trial; about his evidence and mine;
when the prisoner introduced me to the civilian at Hoey's,
he merely said that I was a friend of his; I cannot repeat the
precise words used in introducing me; Denny and I had
only a few words about this trial when we spoke together
yesterday.
President: The civilians to whom you were introduced
you said yesterday were Fenian agents; did they ever ask
you to become a Fenian?
Witness: They did.
President: As a rule did you always pay for your drink
or were you treated?
Witness: As a rule I was treated.
172 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
President: Were those civilians that you met Americans
and Fenians?
Witness: I was told so.
President: What were they talking about when the pris-
oner spoke of the movement?
Witness: About the Fenians.
President: You said that a civilian asked you to go down
to the yard at Hoey's house; did he assign any reason?
Witness: He asked me to go with him; and said that he
belonged to the Fenians, and wished me to join them.
President: Did you notice at any time that the prisoner
had more money than you would expect a soldier to have?
Witness: No.
President: Did you take the Fenian oath?
Witness: I did not; I never was asked to take an oath or
join the Fenians in the prisoner's hearing.
Prosecutor: Was it after your interview with the pris-
oner on the lobby at Hoey's that you were asked to take the
oath?
Witness: It was.
Colonel Baker, Tenth Hussars, being sworn, testified: I
know the prisoner. He never gave me any information of an
intended mutiny in her Majesty's forces in Ireland.
Prisoner: Did any private of the Tenth communicate
with you in reference to an intended mutiny, before the first
of March?
Colonel Baker: No.
Prisoner: What character do I bear in the regiment?
Witness: A good character.
Colonel Cass, sworn and examined. I never received in-
formation from the prisoner with reference to an intended
mutiny. I believe his character is good.
Head Constable Talbot, the notorious informer, was the next
witness. He was not called upon to furnish evidence of the
prisoner's direct complicity in the conspiracy, but only of the
fact that a conspiracy existed. He had testified on the trial
of Color-Sergeant McCarthy, that the latter had agreed to fur-
nish the Fenians with countersigns, barrack and magazine keys,
maps and plans of the Clonmel Barracks, and other aid neces-
sary for the surprise of the garrison.
He also testified that not a single regiment in the service was
free from the same taint of rebellion, and that part of the con-
spirators' scheme was the enlistment of revolutionary agents in
the various branches of the British service. O'Reilly was such
an agent.
His testimony was brief. In reply to a question by the
prisoner, he said:
My real name is Talbot, and I joined the constabulary in
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
173
The arch-informer was succeeded by Private Mullarchy of the
Tenth Hussars.
In January last I was in a public house, in James's Street,
with the prisoner. He took me there to see a friend of mine,
as he said that about a fortnight or three weeks previously a
young man was inquiring after me. There were present
there two civilians to whom he introduced me as two of his
friends, but whose names I don't know. From the room we
first entered we went into a larger one, where there were
three or four soldiers belonging to the Sixty-first Regiment
and Tenth Hussars, another civilian, and a young woman.
Prosecutor: Did you see the prisoner stand up and whis-
per to one of the civilians?
Witness: Yes, to the civilian sitting opposite to him. Very
shortly afterwards the prisoner left the room and did not
return. I then had a few words with the civilian to whom the
prisoner had whispered.
Prosecutor: Did you see a book on that occasion?
Witness: Nothing more than the book the civilian to
whom the prisoner introduced me had taken out of his
pocket; the prisoner was not then present. I had no conver-
sation afterwards with the prisoner as to what occurred in
the public house, or about the friend of mine of whom he
spoke. I never ascertained who that friend was.
Cross-examined by the Prisoner:
Witness: I did ask you to go to the theater on the night
in question. I told you I had got paid my wages, that I was
going to the theater, and that I should like to go and see the
friend of whom you had spoken.
Prisoner: Is that what you call my taking you to Pils-
worth's?
President: We have not got as far as Pilsworth's yet, as
far as I can see.
Prisoner: Is that what you call my taking you to the
public house in James's Street?
Witness: It is; I asked you to show me where this friend
was, and you said you would take me to the public house,
which was the last place where you had seen him.
To the Court:
I returned to the barracks at twelve o'clock that night.
The friend of whom the prisoner spoke was a civilian, so he
told me. The civilian who spoke to me in the public house
asked me if I was an Irishman and I said I was. He asked
me if I was going to join this society. I asked what society.
He said, the Fenian society. I did not know what that was.
Since I was in the public house with the prisoner no one
spoke to me of the evidence I was to give here or at this
trial.
Private Rorreson, Tenth Hussars: I was in Private Ber-
gin's company at Hoey's public house in January last. On
that occasion there were present besides Private Bergin and
myself a number of foot soldiers and two civilians, none of
whose names I know. The prisoner was also present, but I
cannot say if he was in the room when I entered or whether
he came in afterwards. I saw Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald, of
the Tenth Hussars, there too. He was in the prisoner's com-
pany.
174
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Prosecutor: Did you see anything occur on that occasion
between prisoner and the civilians?
Witness: I saw prisoner go up to Fitzgerald, and imme-
diately the latter and the civilians went out. Previous to
this I also saw him whispering to the civilians. Any time he
did speak it was in a whisper.
Prosecutor: Did you see the prisoner go out of the room
on that occasion?
Witness: Yes; the three of them left at the same time. I
did not see the prisoner go out of the room more than once.
When the three left they were absent for about ten or fif-
teen minutes, and they returned one after the other. When
they returned, one of them spoke to a foot soldier, said good-
bye to his comrade, and then left the room. There was sing-
ing in the room that evening. A foot soldier sang one of
Moore's melodies. I particularly remember the words of one
of the songs —
"We'll drive the Sassenach from our soil."
Cross-examined by the Prisoner:
I have been at Hoey's since the occasion in question, but
I cannot say how often. I never saw Private Denny there.
Question: If Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald swore that on the
occasion in question there were no soldiers at Hoey's but those
belonging to the Tenth Hussars, would he be swearing what
was true?
Witness: No, there were infantry there. I can't say that
I was at Hoey's with Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald in Novem-
ber last.
Here the court adjourned, and the examination of Private
Rorreson was resumed on the following day.
In reply to the Court:
The infantry soldiers were sitting alongside of me in Hoey's.
There were not thirty of the Sixty-first Regiment there. The
civilians were sitting at my right. I cannot say whether the
soldiers came in first, or whether they were in the room when
I went in. I will not swear what time the meeting took
place; it was in January. No one spoke to me about my evi-
dence. I was not asked to become a Fenian at Hoey's. Bergin
spoke to me elsewhere of it, but never in the prisoner's pres-
ence. Any time I ever went to Hoey's it v/as with Bergin,
and the civilians always paid for the drink. I never heard
the names of the civilians, but afterwards I heard one was
named Devoy. I never heard the names of the others. Devoy
appeared to be a born Irishman. I never heard any sing-
ing but on that occasion, and the prisoner took no part in
it. I think it was before the night in January that Bergin
spoke to me of being a Fenian, on the way to the barracks
going home. We had been in Hoey's; the prisoner was there.
Bergin had been speaking of Fenianism on the way to the
barracks. He said there was such a thing "coming off".
^President: What do you mean by "such a thing coming
Witness: Like a rebellion breaking out.
Prisoner: When you say you since heard one of the civil-
ians was called Devoy, when did you hear it, and who told
you?
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
175
Witness: I cannot tell who told me; Bergin told me he
was employed at Guinness's, but I cannot say who told me his
name.
Prisoner: I respectfully submit that all evidence given by
the last witness relative to Bergin should be expunged. I did
not object during his examination, as the questions were put
by the Court, but I do now.
The court did not accept this view of the case. In admitting
the hearsay evidence it endorsed the following astounding prop-
ositions made by the Deputy Judge Advocate:
Deputy Judge Advocate:
It is too late to object. The prisoner should not have
allowed the examination to go on and taken his chance of
something favorable to him being elicited by it. For the rest,
I submit that the acts or conversations of co-conspirators are
admissible as evidence against each other, even though one
of them on his trial was not present at those acts or con-
versations. All the matters of fact sworn to, show that the
prisoner and Bergin were participators in the Fenian plot.
Therefore the prisoner's objection is unsustainable, particu-
larly after the examination of the witness.
Having thus summarily disposed of the prisoner's few nominal
rights, the prosecution took hold of the case in the good old-
fashioned way, by putting on the stand an informer of the regu-
lation Irish character — one who had taken the Fenian oath in
order to betray his comrades, and excused himself for the per-
jury by saying, that, although he had a Testament in his hand
and went through the motion of kissing it, he had not really
done so. The testimony of this peculiarly conscientious witness
is interesting, because it is typical. He can juggle with the Testa-
ment, in the hope of cheating the Devil; but when pressed he
owns up: "Most decidedly I took the oath with the intention
of breaking it. I cannot see how that was perjury." And again,
"I told the truth on both trials, as far as I can remember." With-
out further preface the reader is introduced to the delectable
company of Private Patrick Foley, Fifth Dragoon Guards, who
testified:
I know the prisoner. I saw him in Hoey's public house
about the 14th of January. He was confined, and they were
asking about him at Hoey's. The waiter asked —
Prisoner: I object to this evidence. I was not in the
house when the questions were asked.
The objection was admitted.
Witness: At the time I saw the prisoner at Hoey's, there
were a number of people there, principally civilians. Devoy
was one, Williams was another, and Corporal Chambers, who
used at that time to appear in civilian's clothes. Hogan and
Wilson, both deserters from Fifth Dragoon Guards, were
also there in colored clothes. There were many others whose
names I do not know. I took part in a conversation that
night, but I cannot say whether prisoner was present.
176
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
To the Court:
The prisoner spoke twice to me during January and Feb-
ruary.
President: The question refers only to one occasion.
Witness: I spoke to the prisoner in February at Barclay's
public house. I do not know on what day. I went to the bar
and found the prisoner there. He asked me to drink. We
both then went into a room, and the prisoner sat at a table
with some of his own men. The conversation was among
themselves, but it could be heard at the off side of the room.
It was on Fenianism and the probable fate of the State pris-
oners who were on trial at that time. There was also some-
thing said about electing a President as soon as they had a
free republic. They were all paying attention to what was
being said, but I cannot tell if the prisoner said more than
the remainder. Devoy was there, and Williams. There were
other civilians present whose names I do not know. I had a
previous conversation in January with the prisoner at Hoey's,
but I cannot remember what it was about. It was regarding
Fenianism, but I cannot tell the words made use of. I met
the prisoner at Waugh's public house some time towards the
end of 1865. The civilians I have mentioned were there and
some soldiers. In all these places the conversation was re-
lating to Fenianism, but I cannot say if they were in hear-
ing of the prisoner, but everybody heard them. Devoy was
at Waugh's, I think. I frequently met Devoy in company
with O'Reilly. I have heard Devoy speak in presence of the
prisoner about Fenianism, but I cannot remember that he
said anything about what was to be done in connection
with it.
Prosecutor: Was there at any of these meetings of which
you spoke, and at which the prisoner was present, any con-
versation of an intended outbreak or mutiny?
Prisoner: I object to that question, because the witness
has already stated the substance of the conversations as far
as he can remember. The prosecutor had no right to lead
the witness, and put into his mouth the very words of the
charge.
The prosecutor submitted that the question was perfectly fair
and legal.
The Deputy Judge Advocate ruled that the question should be
so framed as not to suggest the answer to it.
Witness: There was a conversation of an intended
mutiny that was to take place in January or the latter end
of February. The prisoner could have heard the conversa-
tion that took place in Hoey's, in January, and in Barclay's,
m February. I reported to my Colonel in February the sub-
ject of the conversation.
Court adjourned for half an hour.
Cross-examination of Private Foley:
n1 £a", \ead -and write- 1 t00k the Fenian oath. I did not
call God to witness I would keep it. I know the nature of
an oath. It is to tell the truth, and the whole truth. I had
w«?s tai?ent ™ m.y nand and I went through the motion of
«orfS£ t' * . i I*J?MU,05 d0 so- 1 swore on two previous oc-
casions I took the Fenian oath. Most decidedly I took the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
177
oath with the intention of breaking it. I cannot see how
that was perjury. I had to take the oath, in a way, or I
would have known nothing about the Fenian movement. I
was examined on the trial of Corporal Chambers. I was
sworn on the trial to tell the whole truth. I was sworn by
the president. I told the whole truth on both trials, as far
as I can remember. I know Private Denny of Tenth Hus-
sars by appearance. I know Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald
of the Tenth, also by appearance. I know Fitzgerald per-
sonally. I only knew him at these places of meeting. I
knew him in January. I knew him to speak to him. I know
Private Smith, Tenth Hussars, by appearance. I know him
only by speaking to him in the month of February. I can-
not say whether I ever saw Private Denny in Hoey's public
house or at Barclay's or Bailey's. I cannot say how often I
was at meetings in these houses in February. When I took
the Fenian oath, most decidedly I intended to become an in-
former. I kept no memoranda of the meetings I attended,
as I reported them all to my commanding officer in the morn-
ings after they took place. My reports were verbal ones, and
I never took down the names of those I met at the meetings.
Question: Have you met Corporal Fitzgerald at any of
those meetings?
Witness (to President) : I am very near tired, sir, answer-
ing questions.
President: If you are tired standing, you may sit down.
Witness: I met Fitzgerald at Barclay's and at Hoey's, but
I cannot say how often; prisoner was present when I saw
Fitzgerald at Barclay's. I knew him personally at the time.
I cannot say whether I then spoke to him. At Corporal
Chambers's trial I was asked to state, and did so, who were
present at the meeting at Hoey's. I did name the prisoner
as having been there.
Court here adjourned for the day.
Cross-examination of Private Foley resumed, on July 5.
Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald was present on the occasion
when I said he was at Barclay's, at the time the conversa-
tion about Fenianism took place.
Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald was here confronted with the wit-
ness, and stated that he did swear that he met the prisoner at
Hoey's and at Pilsworth's, but not at Barclay's. Private Foley
would not be swearing what was true if he swore that he (Fitz-
gerald) made a speech on Fenianism at Barclay's, or was present
at a conversation there about electing a President, "when we
would have a free republic."
To the President:
I was never at Hoey's public house in the prisoner's com-
pany, but I was there two or three days after his arrest, when
a man named Williams came up to the barracks and told me
there was to be a Fenian meeting at Barclay's. On the 13th
of January, prisoner absented himself, and on the 14th inst.
(Sunday) he was taken from the barracks by a detective
policeman.
To the Prosecutor:
I have never made a speech on Fenianism to my recollec-
tion, at Barclay's. I might have said things when I was
178 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
drunk that I would not answer for afterwards. I swear
positively that I was never present on any occasion when
there was talk of electing a President of a republic. I might
have been present at such conversation and not know any-
thing about it.
Prisoner contended that this evidence should have been given
in direct examination but was not admissible in cross-examina-
tion.
The prosecutor contended that the witness, who was recalled
by the prisoner, for the purpose of confronting him with another,
was not asked anything that was not perfectly fair and proper
for the purpose of eliciting the truth.
The Deputy Judge Advocate ruled that the evidence was legal
and proper.
Witness to Prosecutor:
I never made a speech on Fenianism, to my recollection, at
any place. I might have said things when I was drunk that
I would not answer for afterwards. I was drunk every time
I went there afterwards. I swear positively I was never
present on an occasion when there was a conversation about
electing a President of a republic. I might have been present
at such conversation when drunk, and not know anything
about it.
The Court: Why was Williams sent to tell you of the
Fenian meeting if, as you say, you had previously refused
to become a Fenian?
Witness: He was sent, I don't know by whom, but he
used to go round to Island Bridge and Richmond Barracks
for that purpose.
Private Foley (re-examined by prosecutor) :
Having heard the evidence of Lance-Corporal Fitzgerald,
I have not the least doubt that I met him at Barclay's in
February last. The reason I did not, on Corporal Chambers's
trial, mention prisoner as being present at Barclay's in Feb-
ruary, was that I had some doubts of his name. I have now
no doubt that he was present.
To the Prisoner:
I did mention your name to the prosecution about a fort-
night ago.
This ended the examination of Informer Foley. He was fol-
lowed by a duller, but more malicious knave, Private Maher, who
boasted, with low cunning, that he had taken the Fenian oath
out of curiosity, and with the intention of betraying his fellows;
repeated his own smart repartees, and put into the mouth of
the prisoner the wholly imaginary atrocious promise, that he
would hamstring the cavalry horses in case of emergency. One
can almost form a picture of this ruffian from his own words.
The official report reads:
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
179
Private Maher, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment, deposed:
He was a member of the Fenian Society and attended several
meetings of that body, at which were present other soldiers.
He saw the prisoner at a meeting in Hoey's public-house in
January, in company with Devoy and Williams, whom he
knew to be Fenians, and with other soldiers, as also with
Baines, Rynd, and others. On that occasion he saw a sketch
of Island Bridge Barracks in the prisoner's hand, which he
was explaining to Devoy.
The President: You are asked what was said.
Witness: Devoy said he wanted a few men out of the
Hussars to give them instruction what to do, and he wanted
about ten men out of each regiment in Dublin. The prisoner
spoke of cutting the hamstrings of the horses in the stables
in case of any emergency. The conversation then turned on
a rising in the army and how the men would act. I said
the Irishmen in the army saw no prospect before them, and
they would be great fools to commit themselves. Devoy said
they would not be asked until a force came from America. I
said it was all moonshine, and that they were a long time
coming. He told me I seemed chicken-hearted, and that
they required no men but those who were willing and brave.
I told him I was as brave as himself, and that he should not
form soldiers in a room for the purpose of discussing Fenian-
ism. That is all the conversation I can remember on that
occasion.
Cross-examined by the Prisoner:
I was examined on Corporal Chambers's trial. I am not
sure whether I named you as one of the soldiers present on
the occasion referred to in my evidence. I took the Fenian
oath, out of curiosity to see what the Irish conspiracy or
republic, as they called it, was. If any serious consequences
would arise I would have given information of the movement.
I had an opportunity of seeing into the Fenian movement,
and I saw that nothing serious was going to happen. If
there was I would have known it days before, and then given
information. I heard Stephens himself say at Bergin's, that
the excitement should be kept up, while aid from America
was expected. In last March I made a statement affecting
you.
This closed the case for the prosecution.
At the request of the prisoner the Court adjourned to Sat-
urday, July 7, to give him time to prepare his defense.
Court having assembled on that date, the prisoner re-
quested that some member of it be appointed to read his
defense.
Lieutenant Parkinson, Sixty-first Regiment, was then re-
quested to do so.
The defense commenced by thanking the Court for the
patient and candid consideration which had been bestowed
by the members throughout the trial, and stated that the
prisoner had no doubt but that the same qualities would
be exhibited in consideration of the points which would be
submitted to them for his defense. The charge against him
was one involving terrible consequences, and he had no doubt
the greater would be the anxiety of the Court in testing the
evidence brought against him.
180
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
There was only one charge which the Court had to con-
sider, and that was: "Having come to the knowledge of an
intended mutiny." To sustain that charge the prosecutor
should prove, first, that there was a mutiny actually intended;
second, that he (the prisoner) had a knowledge of that in-
tention, and third, that he possessed that knowledge in Janu-
ary, 1866, and did not communicate it to his commanding
officer. The prosecutor was bound to prove each and every
one of those allegations, by evidence on which the court
might safely act. After referring to his services he asked
the court to bear in mind his good reputation, while consider-
ing the evidence against him, as it must have observed that,
from the character of some of the proofs upon which the
prosecutor relied, in conversation with no third person pres-
ent, and no date fixed, it was impossible to displace such
testimony by direct evidence.
The defense then pointed out various discrepancies be-
tween various witnesses and the contradiction between the
evidence of Privates Denny and Smith, where Denny had
clearly committed perjury. But even if these men's evidence
were true, it would not bring home to him one fact to bear
out the charge.
None of these witnesses can say that in his presence one
word was ever said respecting the designs or the plans of the
Fenians, and it only amounted to this, that one day, in a
casual conversation, he said to Smith that some persons they
had met were Americans and Fenian agents. In the whole
evidence, which, in the cases of Foley and Maher was that of
informers, there was much to which the addition or omis-
sion of a word would give a very different color to what it
had got. What was the amount of credit to be given to those
men, when it was remembered that they both took the Fenian
oath, the one, as he said, through curiosity, the other with
the deliberate design of informing?
Maher's oath, on his own admission, had not been believed
by a civil court of justice; and would this court believe it
and convict a man of crime upon such testimony? He (the
prisoner) asked the court to reject this testimony and rely
upon that of his commanding officer, Colonel Baker, who had
deposed to his good character as a soldier. In conclusion,
the prisoner appealed to the Deputy Judge Advocate, to
direct the court that unless he had personal knowledge of an
intended mutiny in January, he was entitled to an acquittal.
Guilt was never to be assumed, it should be proved; for sus-
picion, no matter how accumulated, could never amount to
the mental conviction on which alone the court should act.
The defense having concluded, prisoner called Capt. Barthorp,
Tenth Hussars, who was a member of the court. In reply to
questions put, Capt. Barthorp said:
He was captain of the prisoner's troop, and had known
him for three years. His character was good.
Mr. Anderson, Crown Solicitor, was sworn and examined by
prisoner with regard to a portion of Private Maher's evidence on
Corporal Chambers's trial, relative to the alleged meeting. Maher
did not mention the prisoner as having been present at the al-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
181
leged meeting, when giving evidence at Chambers's trial; but on
the present one he swore that he was present.
In reply to the Prosecutor:
Deputy Judge Advocate said he could not state whether
the meeting of which Maher had deposed at Chambers's trial
was the same mentioned on this.
Prisoner: I would wish to ask the Deputy Judge Advo-
cate a question which arises out of his answer: Did you not
hear Private Maher asked on my trial to name the persons
he had met at the meeting which he deposed to at Corporal
Chambers's trial, and did he not do so?
Deputy Judge Advocate: I did hear that evidence given;
I did hear him state the names.
Adjutant Russell, Tenth Hussars, in answer to prisoner,
said: He (prisoner) was put under arrest on the 14th of Feb-
ruary. The prisoner was in hospital for several days in Feb-
ruary, from 19th to 26th.
President: I do not wish to interrupt the prisoner, but I
wish to point out that these dates are all subsequent to the
charge.
At this point court adjourned to eleven o'clock Monday
morning.
At the reopening of the court, Capt. Whelan (the prosecutor)
proceeded to answer the defense of the prisoner. His reply
entered elaborately into the whole evidence that had been given,
and commented on the various points raised for the defense.
Capt. Whelan defended strongly the various witnesses from the
charge brought against them by the prisoner, of being informers,
and insisted that they were all trustworthy and credible, and that
the discrepancies pointed out in the defense were such as would
naturally arise.
The Deputy Judge Advocate then proceeded to sum up the
whole evidence. In doing so, he said:
The court should bear in mind that the existence of an
intended mutiny should be proved before the prisoner should
be found guilty of the charges upon which he was arraigned.
The court should also bear in mind that it was for it to prove
charges and not for the prisoner to disprove them. To expe-
rienced officers, like those composing the court, it was not
necessary for him (the Judge-Advocate) to state what the
law was, bearing on those charges. He might say, however,
that if the prisoner did come to the knowledge of an intended
mutiny, it would be for them to say whether the prisoner had
given notice of any such intended mutiny to his commanding
officer. This, his commanding officers state, he did not do; so
that it became the subject of inquiry whether any such
mutiny was intended. They had the evidence of Head Con-
stable Talbot on that point, and they should attentively weigh
it. Assuming that it was intended, and that the prisoner was
aware of it and an accomplice in the design, they had then
no less than eight witnesses to prove that complicity. The
Deputy Judge Advocate then went minutely through the whole
182
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
evidence, which he recapitulated in a lucid manner, point-
ing out to the court where it was favorable for the prisoner
or bore against him.
The Judge Advocate concluded by saying: "Now, on a calm
and fair review of the evidence, determining in favor of the
prisoner everything of which there was reasonable doubt,
straining nothing against him, is the court satisfied that the
facts are inconsistent with any other conclusion than the
prisoner's guilt? Is the court satisfied that the Fenians in-
tended mutiny as one of the essentials of that plot?
"Are they satisfied that the prisoner knew of that inten-
tion? If you are not satisfied that the evidence adduced for
the prosecution has brought home to the prisoner the charges
on which he is indicted; if you can fairly and honestly see
your way to put an innocent construction on the prisoner's
acts, it is your duty to do so.
"But, on the other hand, if the court has no rational doubt
of the prisoner's guilt, then it is bound, without favor, par-
tiality, or affection, to find their verdict accordingly. Re-
member, though, that although you may feel very great sus-
picion of the prisoner's guilt, yet if you are not satisfied that
the charge is proved home to him beyond rational doubt, no
amount of suspicion will justify conviction. Apply to your
consideration of the evidence, the same calm, deliberate, and
faithful attention and judgment which you would apply to
your own most serious affairs, if all you value most and hold
most dear, your lives and honor, were in peril. The law de-
mands no more, and your duty will be satisfied with no less."
At the conclusion of the Judge Advocate's address, the court
was made private, to consider their finding. After a short time
it was reopened, and Adjutant Russell, Tenth Hussars, was called
to give testimony as to the prisoner's character. He said that it
had been good during his three years and thirty-one days of
service.
The court was then again cleared and the result was not
known until officially promulgated by the Horse Guards.
On July 9, 1866, formal sentence of death was passed upon
all the military prisoners. It was only a formality. The same
day, it was commuted to life imprisonment in the cases of
O'Reilly, McCarthy, Chambers, Keating and Darragh. The sen-
tence of O'Reilly was subsequently commuted to twenty years'
penal servitude.
Adjutant Russell, referred to in the preceding report, better
known as Lord Odo Russell, had pleaded successfully for leniency
in behalf of the youthful prisoner. The first step in execution
of the sentence was taken on Monday afternoon, September 3, in
the Royal Square, Royal Barracks, in the presence of the Fifth
Dragoon Guards, Second Battalion, Third Regiment, Seventy-
fifth Regiment, Ninety-second Highlanders, and Eighty-fifth
Light Infantry. The prisoner was then and there made listen
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
183
to the reading of his sentence, stripped of his military uniform,
clothed in the convict's dress, and escorted to Mount] oy prison.
Before dismissing the story of his trial (says James Jeffrey
Roche) , I may here relate a curious sequel, which occurred some
six or seven years later in the city of Boston. O'Reilly had many
strange visitors in his newspaper office, but perhaps the strangest
of all was one of the two informers before mentioned. This
fellow, after O'Reilly's conviction, found himself so despised and
shunned by his fellow-soldiers, both English and Irish, that his
life became unendurable. He deserted the army and fled to
America, where the story of his treachery had preceded him.
He was starving in the streets of Boston when he met his former
victim, and threw himself upon his mercy. Almost any other
man would have enjoyed the spectacle of the traitor's misery.
O'Reilly saw only the pity of it all, and gave the wretch enough
money to supply his immediate wants, and pay his way to some
more propitious spot.
The foregoing courtmartial account, as already mentioned, is
taken from James Jeffry Roche's "Life of John Boyle O'Reilly".
I will now add a few personal observations on the informers.
It will be noticed that in the case of all the military informers
except Foley and Maher (in Mr. Roche's book spelled incor-
rectly as Meara) they said they had not taken the Fenian
oath and did not remember names. Every man of them took the
oath, and they only told as much as would save themselves.
They all knew my name and knew there was a warrant for
my arrest. Every one of the 80 men in the Tenth Hussars was
brought to me by O'Reilly and I did the swearing in.
Corporal Fitzgerald of the Tenth Hussars was a London Irish-
man and I have no doubt would have fought well if the Rising
had come off before his arrest. Maher was a Tipperary man, a
solemn fellow who talked generalities. One of his favorite say-
ings was: "A sojer has a haurt, as well as another man." He was
orderly one day at the Under Secretary's office in Dublin Castle,
when he overheard a conversation between two detectives in
which they mentioned the name of a man who had given private
information and that made him lose heart and turn informer
after being arrested. He was shot by a young man named
McNeill in Hoey's public house in Bridgefoot Street during the
trials, but though hit by three bullets none of them touched a
vital spot and he was not killed. One bullet hit Paddy Lawlor
of Newbridge (the man who had decoyed him there) in the foot
184
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
and that saved Lawlor. He was arrested on suspicion and told
me the story in Mountjoy Prison.
I was warned against Patrick Foley by Montague, Centre of
the Fifth Dragoon Guards (then a deserter) and I passed the
warning to the men, but he followed some of them to Pilsworth's
public house on the night of our arrest, was "arrested" with us,
but taken out of the cell in Chancery Lane police station about
an hour after our arrival. Police Inspector Doyle admitted to me
(in a whisper) next morning that Foley was the man who had
given us away.
There was never any singing at any of my meetings with the
soldiers except that of the regular hired singers. There were
then a number of singing public houses in Dublin and they were
selected for our meetings because casual visitors attracted no
attention. James Stephens was never present at any of these
gatherings and his name was never mentioned. The statement
made by one of the informers that he spoke to him was perjury.
There were 8,000 sworn Fenians in the regiments stationed in
Ireland at that time and only one, Patrick Foley, turned informer
before being arrested, and Foley admitted in his testimony that
he joined as a spy. That fact speaks for itself as to the reliability
of the soldier Fenians.
PART IV.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE RISING DOOMED FROM THE START.
A Counsel of Despair — Insurgents Had Practically No Arms and
the Favorable Conditions of 1865-66 were then Non-Exis-
tent— Raid on Chester Castle and O'Connor Incident in
Kerry on February 11, 1867, Premature — Marred Slim
Chances of General Rising in March.
The Rising of 1867 from a military standpoint failed dismally.
It could not have been otherwise under the circumstances. The
favorable elements which prevailed at the end of 1865 and the
beginning of 1866 had been dissipated; sufficient time had not
elapsed in which to remedy the weaknesses and deficiencies which
characterized the situation under Stephens.
The organization in the British Army (fully described in Part
III of this book) was the right arm of the movement and if
used at the proper time would have contributed to success in
two ways, both of which were very important militarily. First,
it would have broken the morale of the British Army in Ireland
and crippled its power to suppress an Insurrection; and secondly,
it would have supplied the Fenians with a splendid nucleus for a
trained army and provided the conditions which would have
enabled the Republic (which they intended to proclaim) to de-
mand International Recognition.
At that time (1865-6) the United States was ready to recog-
nize Ireland's Independence, if an early military success, the
possession of a port, military occupation of a considerable area
of territory and the existence of a Provisional Government in
control of the Civil Administration, afforded justification in Inter-
national Law.
But, when the Rising took place in 1867, most of the British
regiments which included strong forces of sworn Fenians had
been transferred out of Ireland; the stock of rifles in the hands
of the civilian Fenians had been considerably reduced through
police raids, and the reliance of the Home Organization on
America for a supply sufficient to reasonably equip the men still
persisted.
185
186 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
The decision to fight in 1867 was a counsel of despair. The
ability of the Fenians to undertake an insurrection in that year
was considerably less than it was twelve or eighteen months
earlier, but on the other hand it is true that the reasons for
challenging the tyrannical rule of England had become intensi-
fied in the meantime.
T. D. Sullivan in commenting on the Rising wrote:
"Brave Irishmen who had had actual experience of war
in the armies of America, had crossed the Atlantic, and
landed in England and Ireland, to give the movement the
benefit of their services. To these men the break-down of
James Stephens was a stunning blow, * * * they consid-
ered that they could not return to America with their mis-
sion unattempted, and they resolved to establish their own
honesty and sincerity at all events, as well as the courage
and earnestness of the Fenian Brotherhood in Ireland, by
taking the desperate course of engaging forthwith in open
insurrection. It was in conformity with their arrangements,
and in obedience to their directions, that the rising took
place on the night of the 5th of March, 1867."
The leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood were to
some extent actuated in their decision by the considerations set
forth by T. D. Sullivan; it also may be said that in their opinion
it "was better to have fought and lost, than never to have fought
at all". Even though the attempt which they made can hardly
be called an insurrection, yet their gesture was a brave one and
they passed on the "burning brand" to the generations that fol-
lowed. Their demonstration against English Rule had important
results in later days.
On reviewing the facts of the '67 Rising, the wonder is not
that it was such a military fiasco but that it should have been
attempted at all under the circumstances. The efforts of the
men who "came out" in Dublin, Cork, Clare, Limerick, Tipperary,
Kerry, and in smaller numbers in a few other counties, were
confined to attacks on police barracks and coastguard stations,
and they were miserably equipped for even such petty opera-
tions.
A year earlier the chances for initial civilian successes, as I
have pointed out in previous chapters, were favorable to such
a degree as to ensure the immediate co-operation of the formi-
dable force of Fenians in the British Army of Occupation. On the
other hand, the conditions under which the Rising of '67 was
undertaken were such as to preclude all possibility of participa-
tion on the side of the Irish by any of the disorganized and scat-
tered Fenian soldiers who still remained in Ireland.
No matter from what angle the situation of March, 1867, is
examined, the possibility of a successful insurrection in that year
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
187
did not exist, but whatever chance there was for the men of the
organization as a whole to make even a passable showing was
marred by two premature movements in the month previous.
The Raid on Chester Castle by Captain John McCafferty, and
the uprising in Kerry under Colonel O'Connor, on February 11,
1867 — both due to the fact that the general Rising was originally
set for that date, and that the order postponing action to March
5 did not reach them in time, — reawakened the English to the
menace of Fenianism, and they were on the qui vive to deal with
the March outbreak in its initial stages. Yet, if the Chester Raid
had succeeded, its effect on the Rising in Ireland would have had
a totally different effect.
The opinion at the time was that Captain John McCafferty
grew impatient of delay, planned the Chester Raid on his own
responsibility and sent word to Colonel O'Connor in Cahirciveen
to strike on the same date. But the balance of proof seems to
absolve McCafferty and to show that he believed all Ireland was
to rise on February 11 and that his move on Chester would be
simultaneous with it.
Joseph Denieffe, who was very well informed of what was
going on, says in his book that the date of the Rising was orig-
inally fixed for February 11 and then postponed to March 5, but
gives no reason why the change was made. I have no personal
knowledge on the subject, for I was in prison at the time, but all
my information led me for many years to believe that McCafferty
was in fault, as he was an eccentric, self-willed man, with the
guerilla habit of doing what he thought proper and often dis-
obeying orders. While awaiting trial in Kilmainham we were
brought to Green Street Courthouse every day and the guard
of Dublin policemen placed over us in the waiting room were all
friendly and allowed our families to talk freely with us. My
eldest sister brought me several verbal messages from Edward
Duffy, who was temporary head of the organization during
Stephens's absence in America, and one of them, about the 9th
of February, 1867, said: "The fight will be in three weeks, but
we'll be badly beaten. Plead guilty, so as to get a short sentence,
so you can remain in Ireland and help to reorganize the move-
ment." The same message was conveyed to me by Mrs. Luby.
The Fenians of Northern England knew of no postponement
and answered McCafferty's call to concentrate on Chester on
February 11. Michael Davitt, who had lost his right arm, tells
of carrying a bag of bullets to Chester, as he couldn't use a
weapon. He was not an officer of the organization, but knew
that the order was for the February date and the men in Lan-
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
cashire, where he lived, obeyed it. Of course, no written record
of the meetings was kept.
Captain McCafferty had a surprise plan for the capture of
Chester Castle which seemed to give promise of success. Sev-
eral thousand rifles and a large quantity of ammunition were
stored in the castle, there was no large body of troops stationed
near it, and two or three steamers were anchored in the harbor.
The men of the North of England were armed only with revolvers,
but they would have been sufficient to enable them to overpower
the small military guard in the castle and to take possession of
the steamer. Loading the arms on one of the vessels would
require some time, but, with the telegraph wires cut, the work
could be done before any military force could arrive. McCafferty's
plan was to land the arms on the Eastern Coast of Ireland near
Dublin. Had it succeeded, the fiasco of March 5 would have
been averted. He had performed a bigger feat than that while
Grant was besieging Vicksburg, and the chances of success were
all in his favor.
But the plans were all upset by the spy, John Joseph Corydon,
whom nobody suspected at the time. He was trusted by McCaf-
ferty and gave the Government timely information, which en-
abled it to frustrate the project. Troops were rapidly moved
to Chester and many of them arrived before the hour set for the
attack. The Fenians were at their rendezvous, ready for action,
but McCafferty did not arrive on time and they had no com-
mander. They could not fight regular soldiers with revolvers
and were puzzled by the absence of McCafferty. When he reached
Chester several hours late he doubtless explained his delay satis-
factorily, but the rest of the organization were left in ignorance
of it for several years. The awkward and maddening fact to him
was that the train on which he was coming from London was
sidetracked to allow the troop trains to pass.
I got this information from him only about 1874. He then had
a plan to capture the Prince of Wales and hold him as a hostage
to compel the release of the men still in prison, mainly the
soldiers in Australia, and some civilians including Michael Davitt
and those convicted for complicity in the Manchester Rescue in
England. He talked rather loosely of it to enlist support, and a
few hotheads like John Kearney of Millstreet, County Cork, were
enthusiastically in favor of it. They wanted $5,000 from the
Clan-na-Gael, which was refused because the Executive con-
sidered the project to be impracticable and the preparations
for the Australian Rescue had already been begun. Kearney and
I had an argument about it one day in Rossa's Hotel and he told
McCafferty that I had called him a coward, which was a twist
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
189
from what I had actually said. A day or two later McCafferty
called on me and said in the cold, quiet way which was his habit
and in a low voice: "Devoy, I'm told you have called me a
coward. Now I don't allow any man to call me a coward and
live." He was the most desperate man in the movement, who
never made idle threats, so I replied: "McCafferty, you'll please
allow me to live long enough to tell you that I did not call you a
coward, and I'd be a damned fool if I did. What I said to John
Kearney was that you did not get to Chester in time and that
the men you brought there were left without a commander."
He then explained to me about the troop trains with the rein-
forcements for Chester blocking the railroad and delaying his
train, and then walked away without another word.
The North of England men could not return to their homes
and would not have got their jobs back if they did, so many of
them tried to get to Ireland, as they believed the fight was going
on there. Three hundred of them went on a Liverpool steamer
to Dublin, but a large force of police was waiting for them on
the quay and they were all arrested. The number of Irishmen
on the trains in the Chester area had attracted widespread atten-
tion and the townspeople were greatly alarmed, but no arrests
were made in England. McCafferty made his way to Dublin, but
was arrested on landing and later tried and convicted. I met
him in Portland Prison and we worked at stone cutting in the
same gang.
The Government was greatly alarmed at the danger of fight-
ing in England itself. As the episode developed, Chester was only
a demonstration, but its significance was not lost on the Govern-
ment. There were no warships near Chester or anywhere on the
East Coast of Ireland at the time and the arms could have been
easily landed if Corydon had not been told of the intended attack
on the castle. Then the fight in Ireland would have been begun
with several thousand fully armed men, with a desperate fighter
at their head. McCafferty would have probably landed in Wick-
low where the mountains afford excellent fighting ground. His
experience in the Confederate Army was entirely as a Guerilla,
and Michael Dwyer's feats in Wicklow from 1798 to 1803 showed
what difficulties a regular army would have to face.
The newspaper reports of the Rising in Kerry at the same
time as the Chester Raid, from which A. M. Sullivan took his
account of it in his "New Ireland", are full of errors and grotesque
exaggerations, with the exception of the wild panic of the Kerry
gentry. What really occurred was this:
Head Constable O'Connell, in command of the Peelers in
Cahirciveen, numbering twenty, although a Protestant, had four
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
sons who were all Fenians and a daughter who strongly sym-
pathized with the movement. She was a fine, tall girl and
carried out under her cloak, two at a time, all the rifles in the
barrack and handed them to her brothers outside, and they
passed them to Colonel O'Connor's men. I knew the four
O'Connell brothers and their splendid sister some years later in
New Haven, Conn., where they were in the building business,
and the four were members of the Clan-na-Gael. I got valuable
information about the Kerry Rising from them. Colonel John
J. O'Connor had a fine fighting record in the Union Army in the
Civil War; he returned to his native county intending to remain
there and was assigned to the command of the district.
Having got the Peelers' rifles, O'Connor started for Killarney.
On the way he captured without a fight the Coastguard Station
at Kells, between Cahirciveen and Glenbeigh, with some rifles,
and continued his march. On the road the Insurgents met a
horse policeman riding from Killarney to Cahirciveen and ordered
him to halt. He paid no heed to the order and attempted to ride
on, so they shot at him and he was severely wounded, but did not
die. O'Connor found on him a captured order addressed to him,
in code, changing the date of the Rising from February 11 to
March 5, and a list of the prominent Fenians in Cahirciveen. The
countermand convinced O'Connor of the futility of going further.
With only a handful of his men armed he could not face a body of
regular soldiers, so he told his men to disperse and return to their
homes. Some of them, instead of going home, took up a position
on a neighboring mountain to await developments. The develop-
ments were not long in coming.
General Sir Alfred Horsford (a Scotchman) , who was in com-
mand in Limerick, was the most enterprising and resourceful
General in the British Army — I might say the only one, except,
perhaps, Sir Hugh Rose, then Commander of the Forces in
Ireland. He commandeered every available vehicle — jaunting
cars, gentlemen's carriages and business vans— loaded the sol-
diers on them, and rushed them to Cahirciveen. When I read the
reports in the newspapers given to me by a Dublin policeman
named Duff, who was one of the guards placed over us in the
waiting room of the Green Street Courthouse, I said to myself:
"Horsford does not know what I know, — under other conditions
he could not rely on his men to do such work". The Seventy-
third Regiment, supposed to be all Scotch and wearing plaid
trousers and Glengarry caps, had 300 Fenians in its ranks, and
they were exceptionally good men. It was one of the regiments
sent to Ireland to replace the disaffected ones early in 1866 and
arrived in Dublin just before my arrest, but in time to have one of
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
191
our men from Scotland introduce me to the Centre and to enable
me to introduce him to some of the Dublin men. At that time
there were many Irishmen in the Highland regiments.
Horsford surrounded the mountain on which O'Connor's men
were, placed his force in open order at the foot and directed that
no one was to be allowed to pass through. But that night every
one of the insurgents passed through in safety and made their
way home. Most of them when creeping out through the ex-
tended line, not knowing that they had many friends among the
soldiers, thought they were unseen. But the Fenians in plaid
trousers and Glengarry caps saw them well enough, and the
Scotchmen shut their eyes. Many of the Scotchmen were Gaelic
speakers, and Iveragh, of which Cahirciveen is the chief town, is,
even at this writing (1928) one of the strongholds of the Gael-
tacht. The tie of a common language — for Scotch Gaelic differs
very little from Irish Gaelic — is very strong, and when a few of
the Scotchmen asked questions of the men creeping out, they
were understood, and so were the replies. It was a case similar to
that of William Putnam McCabe in 1798 when he appealed to his
Highland Scotch escort in Watling Street, Dublin, in Gaelic and
was allowed to escape.
O'Connor's men knew every foot of the country and had no
difficulty in making their way home, but some of them were
arrested later and three were convicted on the evidence of the
Coastguard men. I knew one of them named Moriarty in New
York, who was a splendid man.
There was a sharp lookout for O'Connor, but he disguised
himself as a priest, got to Queenstown and took a steamer for
America without being recognized. He arrived safely, but died
a few years later.
O'Connor's short-lived Rising created a great panic among
the gentry. They flocked into Killarney, taking their wives and
children with them and all their valuables that would fit in the
carriages. They poured telegrams into Dublin Castle for aid, laid
in a stock of provisions in the hotel at the railroad station, put
sandbags in the windows and begged the police to garrison it
for their protection. The aid came in a few days. Besides the
troops from Limerick, trainloads of soldiers were sent from the
Curragh Camp and reinforcements also came from Cork. The
panic-stricken landlords made the Government think the insur-
rection was on a much larger scale, and the number of troops
sent was wholly unnecessary.
Among the most prominent of the fugitive gentry were the
relatives of Daniel O'Connell. Practically every one of them then
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
in Ireland who bore his name was among them, and many others
who were relatives by marriage. They were among the most
clamorous for strong action. The only well known relative who
was not with them was The O'Donoghue, who was a grandnephew
of Daniel, and who was then in London. Early in 1866, he de-
scribed the attitude of the Irish people as "one of waiting",
evidently meaning waiting for the fight. His sympathies were
known to be with the Fenians and he would have joined the
organization with a group of other "Moderate" Nationalists on
condition that the system of governing it was changed from a
dictatorship of one man to an elective Council, such as was later
adopted by the reorganized I. R. B.
Had The O'Donoghue and the others been taken in at that
time and the condition agreed to, it would probably have saved
both Stephens and the I. R. B. O'Donoghue was a spendthrift,
and was only relieved of financial difficulties by marrying the
daughter of a rich Athlone banker named Ennis, who was liberally
dowered. But in the meantime he had taken a Government job
and dropped out of public life. It is hardly possible that he would
have done this if he had joined the organization. And had the
elective council plan been adopted the misfortunes which befell
the movement through Stephens' weakness and vacillation when
the crisis came would in all probability have been avoided.
As for The O'Donoghue, he remained popular in Kerry to the
last, and to some extent in the rest of Ireland. The Corkmen
called the Kerrymen of that day "Chieftain Hunters" because of
their personal loyalty to the "gallant young Chieftain of the
Glens", and his popularity was greatly increased by his chal-
lenging Sir Robert Peel to a duel for an insulting remark made
in a speech. Sir Robert declined to fight and was publicly accused
of taking refuge "behind his wife's petticoats". His wife took
some part in the public controversy which followed the chal-
lenge, but I don't recall what seemed to justify the charge. But
I do remember T. D. Sullivan's satirical poem, the refrain of
which was:
"Swaggering Bob,
Staggering Bob."
It had a great vogue at the time, and T. D. also wrote a sar-
castic rhyme on the mad flight of the Kerry landlords during
O'Connor's Rising. It was said for many years later that The
O'Donoghue remained a Nationalist by conviction, notwithstand-
ing his Government job. It was a great pity that his financial
difficulties obliged him to take it, for he was a man of fine ability
and an eloquent orator.
CHAPTER XXVI.
STEPASIDE AND GLENCULLEN.
Dublin Men, Under Patrick Lennon and John Kirwan, Captured
Two Police Barracks After a Short Fight — Few Casualties.
As I have already said, I have no personal knowledge of the
Rising of 1867, being in Mountjoy Prison at the time, but having
heard of the approximate date from Edward Duffy, I was on the
lookout and anxiously awaiting news of it. On the night of
March 5 the challenges of the sentries as the rounds were being
made every half hour or so convinced me that "the game was up".
The soldiers belonged to the Coldstream Guards and they had
deep, sonorous voices — the English Guards were all the kind of
men that Cromwell wanted, with "big noses and strong lungs" —
and the quality of their challenges showed unmistakably that
they were under a strain.
I climbed up to the cell window, which only opened slant-
ingly, and found that rain, sleet and snow followed each other
in quick succession, and I said to myself sadly: "God help the
poor fellows who are out to-night without overcoats or warm
clothing. And what are they going to fight with?" With all
the handicaps which I knew to exist, and the blizzard added,
what kind of a fight could the boys put up?
I lay awake most of the night and my short naps were dis-
turbed by fitful dreams of charges of cavalry, and unarmed
bleeding men, in places within the city like Crampton Court,
where cavalry charges were impossible. In my waking moments
Michael Scanlan's song, "The Fenian Men" (written to the air of
"O'Donnell Abu") came to my mind, and I contrasted its glow-
ing prophecy with what I knew must be the pitiful performance:
"See who comes over the red-blossomed heather.
Their green banners kissing the pure mountain air;
Heads erect, eyes to front, stepping proudly together,
Sure Freedom sits throned on each proud spirit there."
And its chorus:
"Out and make way for the bold Fenian men."
Most of the Fenian poetry written in America indulged in
prophecy like:
"The Phoenix Zouaves
Will do nothing by halves
When they chase the red foe from old Ireland."
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
But in Ireland our song writers mostly recalled memories of
'Ninety-Eight, such as John Keegan Casey's "Rising of the
Moon":
"Well they fought for poor old Ireland,
And full bitter was their fate;
(Oh, what glorious pride and sorrow
Fills the name of Ninety-Eight!)"
Next morning Father Potter, a splendid Irishman, who had
temporarily replaced Father Cody as Chaplain, paid me a visit
and told me that all Ireland was up in arms, that Kilmallock
had been captured, that a battle was going on in Drogheda and
that Cork and Tipperary were practically all in the hands of
the Rebels. These were the reports current in Dublin that day,
but a couple of days later he told me of the sad failure — the
debacle — at Tallaght, but was still hopeful of success in the rest
of Ireland. Poor Father Potter (a Dublin man) was one of the
kindliest souls I ever met and a strong sympathizer with the
Fenian movement. A few days later Father Cody came back and
the news supply was shut off.
I heard no more about the Rising until a young Corkman
named Coughlin, convicted for his part in the fight at Bally-
knockane under James F. X. O'Brien and "The Little Captain"
(William Mackey Lomasney), was brought into Millbank and
while working side by side at the pump to fill the cistern on the
top of the building, told me the whole story of the miserable
failure, and the treachery of Corydon and Massey.
Later, others who had taken part in the Rising arrived and
as opportunity offered, told me what happened in Cork, Tipperary
and Drogheda. With few exceptions it was a sad story of fail-
ure and suffering. Some of the prisoners had not been arrested
for a considerable time after the Rising and knew a lot about
subsequent happenings.
But it was only when I arrived in New York after our release
and deportation that Pat Lennon (who himself came a week
later in the second batch of released men) together with John
Kirwan, — both of whom had participated at Stepaside and Glen-
cullen — called to see me, and from them I got most, but not all,
of the story.
The reports of the Dublin Rising in the Freeman's Journal
(published only on March 7) were very poorly done and were
evidently supplied by the police. It was wretched journalism.
The biggest news of the day was deemed worthy only of a few
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
195
short paragraphs. As copied from the files of the Freeman
recently by my nephew, Peter Devoy, here they are:
(From the Dublin Freeman's Journal, March 7, 1867.)
It was reported by the Railway Officials at Kingsbridge
that the railway lines had been torn up at three places on
the main line, at Holycross, at Knocklong, and near Thurles.
It was also stated that Limerick Junction, being a place of
great strategical importance, was to be seized and made a
centre of action for the Counties Tipperary, Limerick and
Cork.
In Dublin numbers of men were observed going through
the streets between nine and ten o'clock last night. The
general rendezvous appears to have been in the country
about Crumlin and Tallaght. Shortly before ten o'clock last
night a body of men about 500 strong was seen on the Temple
Road near Palmerstown Fields. Information of these pro-
ceedings was at once sent to Portobello and a detachment
of Scots Greys was immediately sent off. In addition to
the Scots Greys a detachment of the 92nd Highlanders was
sent to Crumlin, but on their arrival the Fenians had gone
off in the direction of Tallaght. A gentleman who came
from the Green Hills direction near Tallaght stated that he
saw about 1,500 men moving towards Kildare. More light
may be thrown on the movement by a rumour circulated a
few days ago that the Insurgents from the City and County
Dublin were to have a general concentration in the moun-
tain district between Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare.
A gentleman who came from Howth early yesterday
morning reports seeing a body of over 200 men marching on
the Howth Road.
At a late hour last night [6/3/67] a detachment of the
52nd Regiment and a squadron of the 12th Lancers with four
pieces of artillery, occupied Crumlin.
Dundrum, Bray, Stepaside and Glencullen.
The Insurgents met at Milltown and marched to Dun-
drum. They assembled in front of the police barracks and
tried to induce the nine policemen to come out, and they
refused. After some time, the Insurgents were ordered by
their officers to march towards Stepaside. They arrived here
at about two in the morning and called on the police to
surrender in the name of the Irish Republic. Constable
Mcllwaine and his four men refused to do so. Shots were
fired on both sides, and a quantity of straw having been
forced through one of the windows into a room on the
ground floor for the purpose of burning the house, the police
offered to surrender on condition that the men would not be
injured. This was assented to and the police thus became
prisoners of war, and they delivered up the barracks with
all its arms and ammunition.
The Insurgents then marched along the Bray road as
far as Old Connaught and after their scouts returned it
was deemed advisable not to attack Bray. They proceeded
then to Glencullen where they called on Constable O'Brien
and his four men to surrender in the name of the Irish
Republic. He refused and said he would defend the bar-
racks. The order was then given for riflemen to advance
and 50 men armed with rifles came to the front. They drew
196
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
up before the barrack and just as they fired into it the
police fired out and wounded two of the Fenians. They (the
Fenians) then took cover and continued firing for some
time. The leader of the Fenians then ordered Constable
Mcllwaine, their prisoner, to represent to Constable O'Brien
that resistance was useless, and after some parleying O'Brien
agreed to surrender on condition that all the police would be
set free. This was agreed to — the release not to take place
for two hours.
The march of Patrick Lennon's and John Kirwan's men to
Stepaside and Glencullen and the capture of the police barracks
are fully described by Captain Harry Filgate in his letter to the
Gaelic American, which will be found in the next chapter, so I
will only insert here a brief account of some incidents told me by
Lennon himself and other participants in the fighting.
When Lennon ordered his riflemen to take cover they took up
a position behind a fence on the opposite side of the road, and
Denis Duggan made for himself an embrazure through which he
fired. But the loop-holed iron shutters protected the Peelers
and none of them was hit. Lennon said that Duggan (who nine
years later participated in the Catalpa rescue) had great nerve
and acted with the coolness of a veteran.
On their way to Stepaside a boy of fourteen or fifteen stepped
out of a house with a rifle on his shoulder and fell into line. He
proved to be one of the best fighters in the party, but Lennon
never learned his name. When I told the incident to Pat Breslin
(the youngest of the family) , he said he knew him and gave me
his name, but I have forgotten it. I am very sorry for this, as I
would like to put the brave boy on record. He was apparently
a farmer's son.
After the Glencullen barrack had surrendered, Lennon heard
loud talk inside and fearing that some of his men were going to
harm the Peelers he drew his revolver, went inside and said to
the men he found there: "These men are prisoners of war and
I'll shoot any man who attempts to injure or insult them." The
men laughed and told him they were only "taking a ride out of
the Peelers" and did not intend to hurt them. When he came
outside again he found the old Parish Priest haranguing his men
and telling them to go home. Lennon was a man of few words
and rarely used bad language, but he was excited and stepped
up to the priest, put the revolver to his head and with an oath
said: "If you don't get out of here I'll give you the contents of
this." The priest at once took the advice and went away.
Years afterwards a friend of Lennon who knew the story was
taking a walk through the Dublin hills and found the old priest
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
197
sitting on a low wall near the Glencullen church smoking his
pipe, and asked him for a light. He gave him the light and then
said: "Sit down and have a chat." Soon the talk drifted to the
events of 1867 and the old priest told him the story and said:
"That man knew his business and I've no hard feelings against
him. If I didn't do what I did Paul Cullen would be after my
scalp, but that man knew his business."
After being wounded at Dundrum, John Kirwan was captured
trying to get into Dublin and was held under police guard in
Madame Stevens's Hospital. There was some talk of friction be-
tween him and Lennon, but Lennon (who had remained in Dublin
after the Rising) speedily put an end to it by rescuing Kirwan
from the hospital and he managed to get safely to New York. I
saw the first meeting between the two men in Sweeney's Hotel
after our release and nothing could be more cordial. Kirwan was
a Dublin policeman's son, had been a sergeant in the Irish
Papal Brigade and was a close military student. He drilled his
men well and talked a good deal about military tactics. Some
of the Dublin wags nicknamed him "Me and Napoleon", but
Kirwan never used the words.
Larry Caulin, the old Centre of the district, and his cousin,
Larry Ellis, were then working in England and did not learn
of the intended Rising. If they had there would have been 200
stalwart mountaineers in the fighting. Caulin was a perfect type
of the Wicklow Clansman, tall, straight as a pike handle, good
looking, with dark brown hair and blue-gray eyes and reminded
one of Samuel Ferguson's lines (written later) :
"In the dark eyelashed eye of blue-gray,
In the open look, modest and kind,
In the face's fine oval reflecting the play
Of the sensitive generous mind."
Ellis (evidently of Cromwellian descent) was of a perfect
English type— tall and very strongly built, with very light hair
and blue eyes, but he was a fine Irishman, genial and good-
natured. I knew both men very well, as I had attended several
funerals in Glencullen of people born in that district but who
had lived in Dublin.
The absence of the men of the Dublin hills from the fighting
at Glencullen was an illustration of the confusion caused by the
repeated postponements of the fight.
Every farmer and farmer's son in that district was also a
stonecutter. The land is poor and rocky and the grass thin, so
they could only keep a few cows, sheep and goats, with a pig or
198
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
two and a lot of hens, and went to Dublin and England often to
work at stone cutting, while the girls took service in Dublin.
Coming down from Glencullen towards Dublin, the panorama
that meets the eye is one never to be forgotten; mountain peaks
in several directions, some near and others far off; the city itself
beyond the delightful valleys; and though "My own sweet Dub-
lin Bay" is in the distance it seems to be right at your feet — a
beautiful expanse of water on which the yachts look like swans.
Gazing on that vista, how forcibly the thought fastens on your
mind: truly, a country worth fighting for!
CHAPTER XXVII.
FILGATE'S PERSONAL NARRATIVE.
Recollections of Capture of Police Barracks in 1867 — Perfect
Military Discipline of Insurgents — Lennon Commanded
After Kirwan Had Been Wounded.
When John J. Rossiter, one of the men who took part in the
capture of the Barracks at Stepaside and Glencullen (and who
was in later years very active in the Clan-na-Gael in New York
and Newark, N. J.) , died in 1905, his friend and mine, Edward
Whelan, who also fought under Lennon, wrote a sketch of the
fighting for the Gaelic American. Then Captain Harry Filgate
of the Irish Volunteers in San Francisco, who had in the mean-
time been a sergeant in the American Regular Army, wrote a
letter correcting some errors in Whelan's account. As no two
men who took part in the same battle ever agree on all the
details, I prefer to take the version of the man with ten years'
service as an American Regular as likely to be the more accurate.
Filgate's letter is given herewith:
329 Harriet Street,
San Francisco, Calif.,
February 21, 1905.
Editor The Gaelic American: — A very interesting morsel
of Fenian history was that published in The Gaelic American
of the 4th inst. from the pen of Mr. Edward Whelan. Mr.
Whelan, in the biographical sketch of his old, true and tried
friend, John J. Rossiter, which he read at a recent meeting
of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood Veterans' Associa-
tion, very neatly and connectedly weaves in an epitome of
the salient doings of the I. R. B. in Dublin from 1865 to
1867.
Mr. Whelan's chronological statement of what trans-
pired from the time the Irish People paper was seized to the
night of the Rising, March 5, 1867, is, as the boys active in
the movement at the time knew, quite correct. But Mr.
Whelan is very brief in his account of the operations, and
entirely at sea as to the military condition of the contin-
gent he says John J. Rossiter served with on that memor-
able night.
This body, commanded by Captains John Kirwan, Patrick
Lennon and Lieutenant Matt Slattery, was well organized,
well officered, and an effective military unit. On the night
of March 5, 1867, the boys fell into line in Palmerstown
Park, City of Dublin, like veterans, loaded their pieces de-
liberately, counted off and broke into column like Regulars.
An advance guard was thrown out, a rear guard attached,
and, when the country permitted, flankers deployed. We
could not at any time have been surprised.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Our first prisoners were taken near Milltown, consisting
of Sergeant Sheridan and three patrolmen, city police. From
these four revolvers, belts, bayonets and spare ammunition
were taken.
At Windy Harbor our column was reinforced by a strong
detachment of well-armed men, commanded by Captain
John Kirwan. Here Kirwan assumed command over all.
In the attack on Dundrum Barrack Kirwan was shot through
the shoulder, and had to be taken away. The command
again fell to Lennon.
This barrack being so near the city we deemed it not
wise to remain. Instead we pushed on to Stepaside. Upon
nearing this hamlet our column was halted. Sixteen rifle-
men were detailed to take the barrack. The men being
posted, Lennon approached the door of the building, knocked
two or three times with the hilt of his sword. He was asked
from within: "Who is there?" He replied: "I command
you to surrender to the Irish Republic." After a delay the
answer came, "No." Immediately we were ordered to com-
mence firing through the windows and door. Constable
Mcllwaine returned the fire. We discovered that the shots
came from the second floor. This enabled some of us to get
right up to the building, which we did, and with the aid
of sledges taken from the village blacksmith shop soon had
the lower barricaded window broken in. We could distinctly
hear the piercing cries of women coming from the building.
We stopped firing and sledging to see if they wanted to come
out.
Between their shrieks we could hear a voice calling:
"Are you men of honor?" Lennon replied: "Yes; we want
this barrack and all the Government property it contains,
and will make prisoners of war of the men in it." "We sur-
render" came back to us. The door was opened, and we took
possession. In ransacking the desk we came across all sorts
of legal forms, some made out and ready for service. These
we took to the front of the barrack and burned. A "Peeler"
remarked to a few of us standing by: "This is awful work
in a proclaimed district." We told him that it was mild
to what he would see before the week was out. Alas! Alas!
All we could treat them to was to see us lick their comrades
on Glencullen Heights the next day.
With our prisoners we left Stepaside for our objective, a
place near Arklow, County Wicklow. Upon reaching Old
Connaught, near Bray, we were halted. Scouts were sent
into Bray to ascertain how matters were. They reported a
strong force. We expected this force to be annihilated by
General Halpin's command from Tallaght. General Halpin's
men failed to organize for lack of arms. The situation being
fully considered, we concluded to retrace our steps, take to
the Dublin mountains, and destroy all the police barracks
we could find.
We struck Glencullen Barrack on the morning of the
6th. It was beautifully situated for defence. Had the
"Peelers" taken position on the crest of the mountain they
would have compelled us to alter our tactics and delayed us
for some time. Instead, they held on to the protection of
their barrack. When we arrived in the vicinity Lennon halted
us, and deployed just enough men to envelop the building;
the rest, including the prisoners, were ordered out of range.
Lennon did here the same thing he had done several
times before during our march. When ordered to surren-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
201
der to the Irish Republic the Peelers refused. We were
ordered to commence firing. The Peelers answered in kind,
and for a time the exchange was spirited. Our shots, appar-
ently were doing little damage beyond breaking glass and
denting shutters. We soon discovered a vulnerable spot.
A detail was sent on the roof. Slates soon began to fly, a
hole was knocked through, and a dozen men with revolvers
stood ready to drop inside. The Peelers discovering the
situation shouted an unconditional surrender. Lennon
asked: "Is there treachery in this?" "No" came the
reply. The door was opened and our men took possession.
Our armament was immensely enriched by this victory.
Here, again was displayed the intelligence of our officers.
Preparatory to the attack a picket was sent in the direction
of Three Rock Mountain to watch the approaches from Dub-
lin; another towards the Scalp to watch the roads from
Wicklow. There were no women or children in the Glencul-
len barrack.
* * ♦
Captain Patrick Lennon was scrupulously careful that no
annoyance or insult should be given his prisoners. While
marching up Glencullen Mountain, I noticed a prisoner fall-
ing back. I gently put the butt of my gun to his back and
told him to keep up with the rest. Lennon saw me. In an
instant he drew a revolver and threatened to kill the first
person he found insulting or abusing a prisoner.
Lennon was not a man to seek shelter behind a Peeler,
nor did he want a man who would. With him you had to
stand up like a man and face the music.
The policemen themselves, when they returned to their
respective stations, spoke highly of us, and a Lord (Meath,
I believe) who owned land contiguous to the places we cap-
tured, within a week after the Rising, had published a letter
in the Freeman's Journal, extolling our conduct towards
our prisoners, and praising us in general for our honor-
able military behavior, adding that it was worthy of a
great cause.
"The Government was fully aware of their movements,
and was everywhere prepared to meet them," says Mr.
Whelan. I don't believe it. If the Government knew of
Lennon's party we must charge them with aiding and abet-
ting Fenianism. They stood by and allowed us to destroy
Government property, and endanger the lives of their be-
loved Peelers. Sir Hugh Rose, commander of the British
forces in Ireland at the time — he who blew the Sepoys in
India from the cannon's mouth during the Mutiny — was
aching to make a sacrifice of us. Lennon's party gave him
the chance. He would have taken it had he known it. If he
had known of our existence he would most likely despatch sol-
diers to Harcourt Street Railroad Station, and send them over
the Wicklow and Wexford Railroad with instructions to de-
train a company here and there between Milltown and
Bray. They would surely have bagged us, but not without
a fight. It must have been most galling to him to know,
while he was making prisoners of our men at Tallaght,
that we were doing the same to his pets on the other side
of the mountains.
Another evidence that they did not know about us: When
our party disbanded and each man chose his own route
home, I happened, about 4 o'clock in the evening of the same
day to reach a village two miles outside Rathfarnham. Just
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
as I did a company of heavy dragoons dashed by, going
in the direction where our men had been. In ten minutes
they were followed by four companies of infantry, at forced
march cadence. These were followed by two pieces of field
artillery. The infantry must have come from Beggar's
Bush, or Ship Street Barracks. Two hours would have
brought them to where I met them. It is, therefore, reason-
able to assume the first information the Government had
of Lennon's party must have been about 1 o'clock p. m. on
the 6th.
Henry P. Filgate,
Late "B," Lord Edward Circle I. R. B.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE DISASTER AT TALLAGHT.
Police from Ambush and in Pitch Darkness Poured Volley
into Main Body of Fenians and Killed Their Leader — Many
Prisoners Taken.
There is much confusion and conflict of testimony in the
accounts of what led up to the disaster at Tallaght, County
Dublin, on the night of March 5, 1867, but all agree that it was a
disaster.
General W. G. Halpin was in command of the Dublin District
in the Rising, but he was several miles away from Tallaght, with
a small body of men, when the misfortune occurred.
I was with him for two years in Chatham Prison. He told
me about being with the Breslins in Col. White's demesne (the
Colonel was away from home) , that the men he expected to
join him there did not turn up and how he got back into Dublin,
but that was all. He was a highly intelligent man who had
thrown up a position which brought him an income of $10,000 a
year — City Engineer and County Surveyor of Cincinnati — to go
to Ireland for the fight and his sincerity could not be doubted.
I knew Niall Breslin for sixty years — half a century of it in New
York — and he agreed with Halpin that the men of the other
Circles did not turn up. How they came to be marching on
Tallaght under the leadership of Stephen O'Donoghue, a civilian,
neither Halpin nor Breslin explained and probably did not know.
All that we can ever be certain of is that "somebody blundered".
I understood from Halpin and Breslin that the men were to
assemble in Colonel White's demesne before making any attack,
but the actual fact was that the main body of Fenians, several
thousand strong, but mostly unarmed, was marching along the
road to Tallaght and near the village, on a pitch dark night,
without an advance guard or any other precaution, when a
volley from sixty police rifles was poured into them, killing
O'Donoghue and wounding several others. They could not see
where the volley came from, or anything in front of them, so all
the few who had rifles could do was to fire straight ahead of
them in the direction of the flashes. As soon as the police had
time to reload their old-fashioned Enfields they fired again
and inflicted a few more casualties.
203
204
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Then the Fenians did what all raw soldiers do under such
circumstances facing an unseen foe: they broke, retreated in
confusion, and tried to make their way to Dublin as best they
could. An ex-British soldier (a Dublin man whose name I forget)
told me in New York that he tried to rally them, but failed.
The bridges over the Grand Canal, which had to be crossed
to get into the city, were all guarded by police and the men were
all arrested and marched to the Upper Castle Yard, where, broken
and weary after their terrible night, they had to lie on the wet
ground in their rain-soaked clothes for many hours. It was a
sad ending to the high hopes they had cherished for ten years.
The disaster was complete.
Those assembled at the rendezvous with Colonel Halpin num-
bered only fifty or sixty men, with about half a dozen rifles, and
included five of the Breslin brothers — Michael, previously men-
tioned, Thomas, who belonged to the B. Division (the grenadiers
of the Dublin police) , Ephraim, Niall (the Centre of the Circle) ,
and Patrick, who was only fifteen years of age. When they were
starting out from their home in Rathmines their mother begged
them to leave Pat with her, but he cried and insisted on his
right to go. They locked him up in a room, but he climbed out
through a window, followed his brothers and overtook them
about a mile away. They were a great family.
The party was piloted to Colonel White's demesne by Michael
Lambert, later President of the Amnesty Association, who knew
every foot of that part of the County Dublin.
The men captured after the Tallaght rout were all imprisoned
for a time, but, as there was little evidence against them, none
of them got heavy sentences.
The police guards at the canal bridges were all withdrawn
in the belief that all the men who were in the Rising were taken,
and this enabled Lennon's men, who had hung round the suburbs
till "the coast was clear" to get safely back to their homes.
Halpin told me that he remained playing billiards in a public
house in Rathfarnham all day on March 6, taking sherry and
egg for nourishment, and got into the city in a cab after night-
fall. He was arrested several weeks later trying to board a
steamer for America at Queenstown— the old Irish name of Cobh
had not then been restored — and had a sensational trial. He
knew he was sure of conviction and that it would be a waste of
money (if he had any) to engage a lawyer, so he defended him-
self. He did not bother himself about evidence for the defense,
but raked the Crown witnesses fore and aft. He paid particular
attention to Governor Price of Kilmainham Jail, who was a petty
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
205
tyrant and a vindictive creature. Halpin nicknamed him "The
Gorilla", which was very appropriate. Price was a very low-
sized, but powerfully built man, with forbidding features, a long
yellow mustache and side-whiskers and shaggy eyebrows. He
had a personal hatred for all the prisoners and never missed an
opportunity of inflicting heavy punishment.
Tallaght was the worst misfortune of the whole Rising and
it was a wonder that the men of the organization, after such a
series of defeats, had the recuperative power to reorganize the
movement. Their chagrin over the failure proved a strong incen-
tive, and in a few months Dublin became once more the chief
stronghold of the organization, although it seemed to me when
I arrived in New York that every man I knew in Dublin was
here. These refugees from Dublin, Cork and Limerick were the
backbone of the Clan-na-Gael, which was started almost simul-
taneously with the reorganization of the I. R. B. in Ireland and
Great Britain.
Halpin was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. While
in Millbank before being sent to join the other "hard cases" in
Chatham, he was turning the pump handle one day and the
English convict who was facing him (an "old lag") told him he
knew all the "Finnians". Halpin named them all one after an-
other and the thief said he knew them all. "Do you know
Halpin?" "W'y, yes I know 'im well. 'Is Moll rounded on 'im."
Halpin told us the story with great gusto.
When we were released in 1870 Halpin refused to accept the
condition attached to the "conditional pardon" of going to
America, though his home was in Cincinnati, and he remained
in prison for more than a year, until the Government got tired
of keeping him and he was set free. He at once started for
America, although he refused to be compelled to go there. He
lived to a ripe old age and died in Cincinnati.
Johnny White, one of my men in Naas, owing to some family
trouble, enlisted in the Fourth Dragoon Guards early in 1865,
when the regiment was stationed at Ballincollig, County Cork.
It was moved to Newbridge, County Kildare (about 26 miles from
Dublin) , a little before the Rising, and White, who had deserted
and come to New York, told me the story of the movements of
the regiment. The whole regiment, except about fifty men, were
Fenians, but notwithstanding the revelations of the courts-
martial, its officers had no suspicions. On March 6 when the
men routed at Tallaght were prisoners in the Castle Yard the
regiment received orders to proceed to Tallaght, and what hap-
pened was a roaring farce. The men had, of course, to provide
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
oats and hay for the horses and to be supplied with sandwiches
for themselves, but the packing of the officers' baggage, which
included bottles of wine and other luxuries, took up nearly the
whole day. The order to march was received at ten o'clock in
the morning, but it was seven that evening before they were
ready to move on the rebels, — who were already prisoners. A
special train had been provided, with a pilot engine ahead, and
the train moved slowly and cautiously along as if an attack were
expected. After about two hours it stopped at a point between
Straffan and Celbridge, and the work of getting off the horses
and the officers' baggage took more than an hour. Then they
started for Tallaght through a country of narrow roads, in-
habited by Dublin shopkeepers and retired officers of the army,
with gardens and woods on each side. Cavalry would be at a
great disadvantage if attacked there, but there was no one to
make the attack. But the soldiers expected one and White
told me they were whispering to one another: "When will the
boys come?" and were ready to join them at the first shot.
They arrived in Tallaght about seven o'clock on the evening
of March 7, nearly two full days after the Fenians had been dis-
persed. It was an opera bouffe performance and a choice illus-
tration of the inefficiency of the British Army. It was chasing
shadows for a whole week after the Rising had failed.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE FIGHTING IN CORK.
Fully 4,000 Men, Mostly Unarmed, Turned Out in the City —
Their Operations Consisted Only of Attacks on Police Bar-
racks— All Attempts, Except One, Failed — "The Little Cap-
tain" and His Merciful Terrorism.
"Rebel Cork" did its best on the night of March 5, 1867, but
its best, owing to lack of arms, amounted only to attacks on some
police barracks, all of which, except one, failed. I was told by
Corkmen after my release, as well as by young Coughlin in Mill-
bank, that 4,000 men turned out in the city, but they had less
than fifty rifles and no American officer of rank or experience
was assigned to the command, except Colonel James Moran (then
a Captain) , who was put in charge of Mallow.
At Ballyknockane, a few miles from the city, James F. X.
O'Brien, a civilian and a clever man, but without any military
knowledge, was in command, and his chief lieutenant, William
Mackey Lomasney, had served as a private in the Union Army in
the Civil War. Lomasney had considerable military ability, but
was an extremely modest man who never asserted himself and
he obeyed O'Brien's orders implicitly. But all those who took part
in the fight, with many of whom I talked in New York, agreed
that the capture and destruction of the barrack was due entirely
to the work of "The Little Captain", as the boys called him.
Curtis's History of the Royal Irish Constabulary, apparently
written for the sole purpose of puffing the Peelers and giving
them entire credit for putting down the Rising, begins every
account of a skirmish with the statement that "a large body of
well armed Fenians" attacked the police barrack and were gal-
lantly repulsed by the policemen. There was no "large body
of well armed Fenians" anywhere in the Rising of 1867. The
Fenians were almost wholly without arms everywhere and the
wonder was that they turned out at all. It was generally said
that the men were told that arms would be distributed after
they turned out, but I could never find any proof of this. The
idea seemed to be that the arms captured from the police would
enable them to hold out until a shipload, with a covering force,
was landed from America. The shipload was sent, but arrived off
the Irish coast too late to be of any use, and the vessel was
obliged to return to America. The police as a "reward" for the
207
208 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
defense of their barracks in 1867, were thereafter styled the
"Royal Irish Constabulary".
A fight in a barroom, or the rumor of a divorce would get
more space in the New York papers than the whole Rising ob-
tained in the leading Dublin journal of the day, and the news
was always at least a day late, the paper evidently waiting for
the Castle to supply it. Yet at that time several of the Manag-
ing Editors, City Editors and nearly all the crack reporters on
the leading New York daily papers were born Irishmen, showing
that it was not lack of journalistic talent in the race, but absence
of spirit and enterprise in the management, and toadying to or
fear of the British Government, which was responsible for the
meagre reports. It was a demonstration of the crying need for
a revolution.
The following brief paragraphs in the Freeman of March 7,
1867, and following days, are all the paper published (with the
exception of a few lines on Knockadoon) about the Rising in
Cork:
"Large numbers of the Insurgents assembled in a suburb
of the city known as Fair Hill and marched north, tearing
up the railway rails at Rathduff. This party was supposed
to be marching on Mallow Junction.
"Shortly after two in the morning a large body of In-
surgents attacked the police barrack at Midleton and were
repulsed. They then proceeded towards Castlemartyr and
on their way they fell in with a patrol of four police. The
constable in charge was shot dead, another wounded, and
the other two made prisoners. On reaching Castlemartyr
they immediately attacked the police barracks and were re-
pulsed, leaving their leader dead on the field.
"The police station at Burnfort between Blarney and Mal-
low was sacked and burnt."
And the paper didn't contain one word about Ballyknockane
until March 11, doubtless because it was a Fenian victory and
the police didn't want to give it out. Immediately following the
little paragraphs about Cork, the Freeman of March 7, under the
headline "Precautions at Powerscourt" had the following:
"One hundred Marines arrived at Powerscourt this
evening, 10th March, to protect the mansion from a Fenian
invasion. It is understood that the force was granted at
the special request of Lord Powerscourt."
The Lord Powerscourt of the day was very unpopular, but
his residence was as safe from attack as the beautiful waterfall
near by. Not one of the residences of the gentry was molested
anywhere during the Rising, though some lead had been stolen
from the roofs to make bullets in preparation for it. There was
absolutely no looting, no woman was insulted, and even the most
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
209
notorious "felon-setters" were left unmolested. The nearest ap-
proach to looting was the commandeering of the bread from a
baker's cart in Thurles, and that was done in the name of the
Irish Republic.
As the Peelers resisted stubbornly at Ballyknockane, though
their fire inflicted but few casualties as the Fenians fired from
cover, Lomasney took a small detachment to the rear of the
barrack, smashed a window, threw in some lighted straw and
piled in more to feed the flame. This soon smoked the policemen
out, set fire to the building, and they surrendered. They were
held prisoners for a time after being disarmed until it was con-
sidered safe to set them free. Although the Fenians were in
strong force, their lack of arms made it impossible to face regu-
lar soldiers and the spot was too close to Cork, where there was
a large garrison, to risk delay. Detachments were sent to attack
other nearby police barracks, but the attacks all failed and
O'Brien decided to disband his men and sent them back to the
city while it was possible to get in.
Following is the report in the Freeman of March 11 of the
Ballyknockane fight on March 5:
"Ballyknockane, Mallow.
"A party of Fenians marched out from Cork to Bally-
knockane, which is six miles from Mallow. There were five
policemen in the barrack and when summoned to surren-
der they refused. A volley was fired at the windows and the
police replied, wounding one man. The Insurgents then
forced the back door and set fire to the place, and com-
pelled the police to come out and their arms were taken from
them."
William N. Penny (a Protestant) , who was for many years
Editor of the New York Daily News, was at that time foreman-
printer of the Cork Southern Reporter, a bigoted Tory organ,
and he told me that the compositors, one after another, came to
him on March 5 and asked for a day off on various pretexts. One
had a sister who was getting married, another wanted to attend
his aunt's funeral, another's father was sick, and so on. Penny
lived north of the city and as he was going home very late that
night he was halted and questioned by detachments of soldiers,
but when he told them he was employed by a staunch Loyalist
paper he was allowed to go his way. Late next day he learned of
the capture and burning of Ballyknockane police barrack and
that accounted for all the weddings and funerals. The proprietor
of the paper, a stern old Tory, was in a furious temper and
ordered him to "discharge every one of the damned blackguards"
and Penny told him he would. Next day the printers began drop-
ping in, looking tired and sleepy, and Penny asked them with a
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
wink if the weddings and funerals had come off satisfactorily and
they all answered in the affirmative. He told them of his orders,
warned them to be very careful, and told them they must all
take new names. He put "every one of the damned black-
guards" back to work and the bigoted old proprietor knew noth-
ing of the trick.
Penny was a member of the Reception Committee which wel-
comed Parnell and John Dillon to New York, was an active
member of the Land League and later joined the Clan-na-Gael,
of which he was a member when he died some years ago. He
was one of the founders of the New York Press Club and his
funeral was very largely attended. There were prominent news-
paper men, politicians, business men, Masons, Clan men, actors
and literary men there, in great numbers, and two or three old
Cork printers who were in the Rising of 1867.
In Mallow only six men turned out, including a brother of
William O'Brien, whom he erroneously, in his Recollections,
places with the party that attacked Ballyknockane. Colonel
Moran assured me he was with him. This group being so small,
Moran hoping to meet another contingent, proceeded to Kanturk,
where they put up at Johnson's Hotel. Johnson was an English-
man married to an Irishwoman and had been a long time in
Ireland. He went into Cork on his jaunting car the next day and
brought back the news of the failure of the Rising everywhere,
and later facilitated Moran's escape to America. His son was
later a member of the reorganized I. R. B. and prominent in the
Amnesty movement. The old man was one instance among many
of Englishmen settled in Ireland rendering service to the National
Cause.
Captain Moran joined the Rhode Island Volunteers in August
1861; he saw nearly two years' service in the Civil War; had com-
mands at Fort Armory and Hatteras Inlet, N. C, and later at
Forts Foster and Parke, at Roanoke Island. But what could an
able officer like him accomplish under the conditions at Mallow
in 1867? After returning to America, he continued his military
activities and was Colonel of the 2d Regt. Infantry (Rhode
Island) from 1887 to 1898 when he resigned.
William Mackey Lomasney was one of the most remarkable
men of the Fenian movement. A small man of slender build,
who spoke with a lisp, modest and retiring in manner, one who
did not know him well would never take him for a desperate
man, but no man in the Fenian movement ever did more des-
perate things. He was better known in Cork for his raids for
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
211
arms in Allport's gunshop and other places after the Rising, than
for the part he played at Ballyknockane. They were done in
broad daylight and he showed great coolness and daring. When
he was arrested he shot the Peeler who had seized him. The
Peeler, although severely wounded, did not die and Lomasney was
tried for attempted murder. Judge O'Hagan, who had been a
Young Irelander and later became Lord Chancellor of Ireland,
was the trial judge and undertook to lecture him on the enor-
mity of his crime, but Lomasney turned the tables on him by re-
minding him that he was himself once a Rebel and that he
(Lomasney) was only following the example O'Hagan had set
in 1848.
The Peeler, a big, powerful man, had knocked Lomasney down
and had him under him while they were struggling for posses-
sion of Lomasney's revolver. It went off in the struggle and
Lomasney had no intention of killing him. O'Hagan was stung
by Lomasney's sharp rebuke and imposed a sentence of fifteen
years' penal servitude, for which he was severely censured by
even the English and the Tory Irish papers. Lomasney took the
sentence calmly, although he had only recently been married.
It was in Millbank Prison that I first met him, and we became
fast friends.
In America, years later, when the dynamite warfare was on
foot, he was warned by the "Triangle" that I was a "traitor"
and he must not have anything to do with me, but he told Aleck
Sullivan that I was an honest man with a right to my opinions
and that he would not obey any order to treat me as a man
disloyal to Ireland. Sullivan needed Lomasney to hold his grip
on the Executive of the organization, which he controlled, so he
let the matter drop.
Lomasney then explained his policy and methods to me, and
they were entirely different from those of the "Triangle". He
wanted simply to strike terror into the Government and the
governing class and "would not hurt the hair of an English-
man's head" except in fair fight. We then discussed the policy
fully and I told him the most he could expect through Terrorism
was to wring some small concessions from the English which
could be taken back at any time when the Government's counter-
policy of Terrorism achieved some success. Lomasney admitted
this, but contended that the counter-Terrorism would not suc-
ceed; that the Irish were a fighting race who had through the
long centuries never submitted to coercion; that their fighting
spirit would be aroused by the struggle; that the sympathy of
the world would eventually be won for Ireland, and that England
212
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
could not afford to take back the concessions, which could be
used to wring others, and that in the end Ireland would win her
full Freedom.
I freely admitted that if honestly carried out on his lines the
policy of Terrorism might succeed, but that I utterly disbelieved
in the sincerity of those men who were directing it; that they
were only carrying on a game of American politics, using the bit-
ter feeling of Irishmen here to obtain control of the organization
and turn it into an American political machine to achieve per-
sonal purposes. I pleaded for a broader policy that would win
the intellect of the Irish at home and abroad and make the race
a formidable factor in the counsels of the world, and an ally
worth dealing with in England's next big war. I further pointed
out to him that the temper of the race would upset all his ideas
about "not hurting the hair of an Englishman's head"; that
once their blood was up the honest fighting men who would
have to carry on the work would kill all the Englishmen they
could and that England, having the ear of the world and control
of all the agencies of news supply, would see to it that the world
was duly shocked.
I wasted my time and made no impression whatever upon
him. He was as cool and calm during the argument as if we were
discussing the most ordinary subject and, while his manner was
animated, there was not the slightest trace of heat or passion
in it. He even denied the right of the Home Organization to
decide the policy for the whole race when I told him the Supreme
Council was as firm as the Rock of Cashel against anything
being done within its jurisdiction of which it did not fully ap-
prove. He was a fanatic of the deepest dye, and all the harder
to argue with because he never got heated or lost his temper.
Such was the man who was blown to atoms under London
Bridge with his brother, his brother-in-law and a splendid man
named Fleming, a short time after my talk with him. The
explosion only slightly damaged one of the arches, and I have
always believed that this was all he intended to do. He was, in
my opinion, carrying out his policy of frightening the English
Government and England's Ruling Class. And that it did frighten
them, as all the other dynamite operations did, there can be no
reason to doubt.
CHAPTER XXX.
KNOCKADOON AND KILCLOONEY WOOD.
Coastguard Station Captured Without Firing a Shot — Peter
O'Neill Crowley's Tragic Death in a Running Fight With
British Soldiers — Honored as a Martyr.
The capture of the Coastguard Station at Knockadoon, some
ten miles from Youghal, County Cork, by Captain John McClure
and Peter O'Neill Crowley, on the night of March 5, 1867, was the
neatest job done by the Fenians in the Rising. It was taken by
a well planned surprise, without the firing of a single shot or the
shedding of one drop of blood, the ten Coastguards were made
prisoners and their rifles appropriated. But it was followed by
the tragic death of O'Neill Crowley on March 31 at Kilclooney
Wood, in a desperate fight with British soldiers. The great out-
pouring of the people at the funeral was a demonstration of sym-
pathy which the English Government could not well suppress,
and aroused Nationalists throughout Ireland.
Captain P. J. Condon, who had served in the Civil War in one
of the regiments of Meagher's Brigade, a native of Cork and a
very capable officer, was assigned to command of the Midleton
district, but was arrested the day before the Rising. James
Sullivan, the Centre of the town, and several others were also
arrested. That disarranged the general plan and broke the con-
nections, so that several contingents did not turn out. Sullivan
had previously been several months in Mountjoy Prison, where I
met him, and his movements were closely watched after his
release on bail. Condon's arrest was a severe blow.
Condon was McClure's brother-in-law, and they had come
from America together. O'Neill Crowley, a prosperous farmer,
about thirty-five years old, was the Centre of the Ballymacoda
district. He was a very popular man, and had great influence
with the people. His Circle numbered a hundred men, and every
one of them turned out. McClure told me they were a fine lot
of fellows, but at the outset they had only one rifle (Crowley's
own) , a few old shotguns, and McClure's Colt's revolver. There
were a few pikes, and some of the men had sharpened rasps,
fastened to rake handles with waxed hemp. With that paltry
armament very little could be expected of them, but they did a
very creditable piece of work.
213
214
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
On three sides of the Coastguard Station there was a sort of
platform made of planks, and on the one in front a sentry paced
up and down. The blizzard which played a disastrous part later
that night had not yet started.
After carefully examining the surroundings, Crowley's men
took up a position in the rear of the station and McClure and
Crowley crept silently along the planks on one of the dark sides,
stood up close to the front and waited. When the sentry reached
the corner McClure gripped him by the collar of his coat, put
the revolver to his breast, and whispered to him that if he said
a word he would shoot. They then took his rifle and went to
the door, which was not locked, the men following silently,
opened it and went in quietly. The Coastguards were all lying
down and most of them were asleep. The arms rack was beside
the door and the rifles were secured at once. The Coastguards
were made prisoners and marched toward Mogeely, a station on
the Youghal Railway ten or twelve miles away, where they were
set at liberty.
McClure's orders were to move to a spot near the railroad to
Youghal, and wait for detachments from other points to arrive.
But none came. The first train from Cork was to have been
stopped, but after waiting in a small wood on the top of a hillock,
the first sight that greeted their eyes about dawn was the Cork
train moving slowly along. It stopped and a Flying Column of
English soldiers and Peelers, numbering 250 men, got out and
headed in their direction. The Fenians were hidden by the trees,
but twenty minutes would bring the Flying Column to the spot.
McClure and Crowley held a hurried consultation and decided to
disperse the men except the ten who had rifles. Every one of the
unarmed men before leaving told McClure that as soon as he
could get rifles for them they would join him again, and all
started for their homes. Not one of them was arrested.
The twelve men then started for a spot which Crowley knew
as a good hiding place. It was a hill with a plateau surrounded
by trees at the top. After placing sentries on watch they lay
down and had a good sleep. It was a lonely section of country
with no houses within miles, and they remained there in perfect
safety for ten or twelve days, and in the meantime were joined
by Edward Kelly, a New York printer, who had come over for
the fight a year previously. He had been with another party
which failed, and he had a rifle. Later they were joined by a
brother of John Boyle O'Reilly, another printer, who had had a
similar experience to Kelly's. Crowley, disguised, went into Cork
to get the news, and got back safely. McClure fully expected
an expedition from America, but when Crowley brought the news
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
215
it was that the Rising had failed everywhere and there was
nothing about an expedition from America. Yet, they resolved
to remain there till something would turn up. They were very
comfortable in a dilapidated old house, and were living on the
fat of the land. They had plenty of chicken and game, and one
of Crowley's men secured some cooking utensils from a family
he knew some distance away.
One morning early their sentry reported that he saw what he
thought to be redcoats in the distance. The hill they were on
commanded a view of the surrounding country for many miles,
and in a few minutes they saw three Flying Columns, composed
of Military and Constabularymen, converging on their little camp.
It would be madness to think of fighting several hundred soldiers
and Peelers with a dozen men, so McClure told the boys to dis-
perse and make their way home. As they knew the country very
well, they all managed to reach their homes in safety. O'Reilly,
who didn't know the country, got away safely also, and was not
arrested. I don't know whether the rifles were saved or not.
McClure, Crowley and Kelly started for Kilclooney Wood, but
after walking a few miles Kelly's feet gave out, and they had to
leave him lying at the back of a ditch. He was arrested, tried,
and convicted, and remained in prison for several years. He
died in Boston many years ago, and, as he was a Protestant, was
buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, in the Roxbury district of
Boston, where John Boyle O'Reilly erected a monument in the
form of a round tower to his memory. The stone of which the
monument is built was brought from Ireland.
Crowley and McClure reached Kilclooney Wood, but were soon
confronted by a soldier, who shouted to them to halt and give
the countersign. Crowley levelled his rifle and fired at him,
saying: "There's the countersign for you." The bullet did not
hit the soldier and they were fired on from several points at
once. The wood was filled with soldiers, evidently searching for
them. The two men turned in other directions several times,
but every time they turned they found soldiers in front of them,
not in military formation, but scattered singly. Every soldier
who saw them fired, and at last Crowley was hit and severely
wounded. Evidently several bullets struck him, but not one hit
McClure.
They could have escaped the bullets in the beginning of the
running fight by surrendering, but neither had the slightest
thought of doing so. Shortly after Crowley was hit they reached
the edge of the wood where they attempted to cross the
Ahaphooca stream which skirted it. Crowley was weak from
loss of blood, and in the stream McClure had to put his left arm
216 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
around him, as his legs were fast weakening. He was six feet
two in height, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and very power-
fully built, and in his efforts to hold him up McClure, who was
only five feet seven, but strongly built, had to stoop, so that the
revolver in his right hand dipped into the water and the old-
fashioned paper cartridges with which it was loaded got wet.
But McClure, in his excitement, didn't know it. Soldiers and
policemen came running up on the outer bank of the stream,
with a magistrate at their head, and the magistrate, who wore
top boots, stepped into the water and called on McClure to sur-
render. McClure pointed his revolver at him and pulled the
trigger, but, of course, it didn't go off, because the ammunition
was wet. He was speedily overpowered and dragged up on the
bank. Crowley was lifted up and placed lying on the bank, and it
was at once seen that his wounds were mortal.
The English forces were accompanied by Mr. Redmond, Resi-
dent Magistrate, who was a retired Captain of the British army
and an uncle of John Redmond.
Dr. Segrave, the military surgeon, on examining Crowley,
found that he could live but a short time. "Can I do anything
for you?" asked Segrave. Crowley requested to see a priest, and
mounted-constable Merryman was hastily despatched to Bally-
gibbon. He was fortunate enough to meet Father T. O'Connell,
the curate of Kildorrery, as he was proceeding to his church to
celebrate Mass.
In a letter written twenty years later, under date of April 5,
1887, to a local newspaper (the clipping from which reached me
in July, 1928), Father O'Connell wrote:
"On my arrival at Kilclooney Wood I found Dr. Segrave,
surgeon to the flying column, busily engaged staunching the
fatal wound with one hand, whilst from a prayer book in
the other he read aloud at the young man's request, the
litany of the Holy Name of Jesus. I was deeply touched by
the scene, and especially by the exclamation 'Thank God, all
is right now', and then turning to the doctor, he said 'Thank
you very much, the priest is come; leave me to him'. I saw
at once the critical condition of the heroic soul whose life-
blood was ebbing fast away. It was clear there was no time
to waste; and having made him as comfortable as circum-
stances would permit, by means of the soldiers' knapsacks,
I then, surrounded by the military and police, administered
the last sacraments."
The prayer book from which Dr. Segrave read was found in
one of Crowley's pockets.
Crowley's dying words as quoted by Father O'Connell were:
"Father I have two loves in my heart— one for my reli-
gion, the other for my country. I am dying to-day for
Fatherland. I could die as cheerfully for the Faith."
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
217
An account of the Kilclooney fight which I published in the
Gaelic American in 1904, confirms the foregoing. Crowley died
while being conveyed to Mitchelstown.
There is one passage in Father O'Connell's letter to which I
take exception. It reads:
"To hold him up as a contumacious Fenian would not be
fair, for he had died long before Fenians as an oath-bound
and secret society were formally condemned by the Church.
I write from thorough conviction when I say that Peter
O'Neill Crowley under no circumstances would willingly be-
come a disobedient child of the Church."
His implication that Crowley would not have participated in
the '67 Rising if the Pope's condemnation of Fenianism had been
issued sooner, has no justification whatever. The Papal Rescript
condemning the movement was issued more than two years
before the Rising and Crowley, as a reader of the Irish People,
knew all about it, though it was not promulgated in the Diocese
of Cloyne.
Crowley's body was given up to his family by Redmond, and
he was given a great funeral. He was buried at Ballymacoda,
where there is a monument to his memory. All Cork seemed to
be there. People flocked to the wake and funeral from all parts
of the biggest county in Ireland, and it was an imposing Nation-
alist demonstration.
O'Neill Crowley was honored as a martyr, and his name is
still revered by Irish Nationalists everywhere. Cork is particu-
larly proud of him. Many people wanted the name of Kilclooney
Wood changed to Kilcrowley Wood. Some of them continued to
call it by that name for many years, and pilgrimages were made
to it on March 5 by the reorganized I. R. B.
Peter O'Neill Crowley was one of the best men in the Fenian
movement, and Ireland never gave birth to a truer or more de-
voted son. His devotion to the cause of Irish Liberty was sublime,
and his courage was dauntless. He led a pure life, was a kindly
neighbor, and had the respect of all who knew him. I knew a
cousin of his in New York named O'Neill, who was one of the
party that captured Knockadoon, and who joined the Napper
Tandy Club of the Clan-na-Gael soon after landing. He returned
to Ireland and died there. I also knew some other men of the
party.
O'Neill Crowley was a deeply religious man. He had taken a
vow of celibacy, McClure told me. Father O'Neill, an uncle of
his, was flogged by the Yeomen in 1798. John Cullinane, one
of the attacking party, was in New York when we landed, and
218
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
often came to see McClure, whom he worshipped. Cullinane
died at home in Ireland at eighty-eight years of age, in April,
1928, and his imposing funeral was a fitting tribute to the old
Fenian.
McClure and I were close friends in Chatham Prison, where
the two of us were brought together from Millbank in 1869, and
he told me the whole story. His account of the incidents after
the surrender at Kilclooney differs in a few details from other
versions, but that can easily be accounted for by the fact that
he was a prisoner at the time and could not see and hear every-
thing that then transpired.
An officer of the New York Clan-na-Gael (President of the old
Sarsfield Club) named Anthony Fitzgerald, went home to Cappo-
quin, County Waterford (his native town) , in the mid-'Seventies,
and frequently met Resident Magistrate Redmond there, and
they often went over the story of Kilclooney Wood. Redmond
said of McClure, with every evidence of admiration: "He was
the pluckiest devil I ever saw." McClure thought he would be
hanged and preferred to die fighting. He was sentenced to death,
but was reprieved and the sentence changed to penal servitude
for life. He was released with the rest of us in 1870, and came
to New York with the first batch of five in January, 1871.
John McClure was born in Dobbs Ferry, a few miles up the
Hudson from New York, of a Tipperary mother and a Limerick
father. When the Civil War broke out he was too young to be
accepted as a recruit, but later enlisted as a private in a New
York cavalry regiment, and served during the last two years of
the war. He was in none of the big battles because his regiment
was operating in the Blue Ridge of Virginia against Mosby's
Guerillas, but was in numerous small fights. Patrick Lennon,
who led the Fenians at Stepaside and Glencullen, was engaged in
the same work at the same time, but they never met until after
their release from prison.
McClure was rapidly promoted and was made a Lieutenant
for gallantry in action at the age of twenty. He was only twenty-
two in the Rising. He married Miss Mary Flanagan, whom he
met at the house of Thomas Francis Bourke's mother, a couple
of years after his return to New York. He had two brothers, the
eldest, William J., being a priest, who published a volume of
poetry, and the youngest, David, was a lawyer, who became
prominent at the New York Bar. John was Chief Clerk in
David's law office. All the McClures are dead at this writing.
CHAPTER XXXI.
TIPPERARY'S EFFORT FAILED.
Turnout Covered a Large Area and the Men Generally Responied
to Call, but had no Supply of Arms and were Unable to Ac-
complish Anything — Pathetic Thurles Incident — Michael
O'Neill Fogarty of Kilfeacle a Splendid Figure.
The Rising in Tipperary, as in other parts of Ireland, was a
failure through lack of arms. The men responded generally to
the call and if properly armed would undoubtedly have given
a good account of themselves, but soldiers and armed policemen
cannot be fought with bare fists and the gallant "Tips" had little
else. They had not in the whole county enough rifles to face a
company of soldiers or fifty Peelers, and must have wondered
what they were expected to do. All that was possible was to
make a demonstration against the Government and that they
did.
The Freeman report on March 7 says that Colonel Gleason
(presumably "big Jack", the brother of the future Mayor of Long
Island City) was in command in Tipperary, but he was not; and
he was not a competent officer. He was a giant in stature (6 feet
7) , had served through the Civil War without any particular
distinction, and was one of the first to volunteer to go to Ireland
for the fight in 1865.
His brother Joseph, who had a good fighting record in the
Civil War, acted very badly in Ireland. Like his brother, he had
gone over for the fight and in the Rising was assigned to the
command of Thurles, but he didn't turn up on March 5 and
never gave any reason for his action. Of course, as a trained
soldier, he knew the Fenians had no chance, but he accepted the
command and then failed at the last moment. The Gleasons
were Tipperary men.
The Centre of the Thurles District, a simple young fellow
named Sheehy, from whom I got the story in Portland Prison,
turned out four hundred men, who were well drilled, so far as
marching and keeping step were concerned, but without a com-
petent officer they were at a great disadvantage. They had
twenty smooth-bore muskets. Sheehy marched his men into
Thurles in good order only to see some twenty Peelers marching
out at the other end of the street. Thurles was theirs without
219
220
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
firing a shot. They had no knowledge of what was taking place
elsewhere and knew nothing of Joe Gleason's orders, so after
waiting some time they helped themselves to the contents of a
baker's cart, and decided to return to their homes and await
developments.
Sheehy's case was pathetic. His mother was a bedridden
widow who had five acres of land which he used as a paddock
in which to keep cattle between fairs. He had been making a
good living and was his mother's only support.
We were standing under a shed out of a shower of rain in
Portland, he with his stonecutter's mallet and chisel in his hands,
as he told me, with tears in his eyes, of his parting with his
mother. "She put an elegant green sash on me," he said, "kissed
me and gave me her blessing when I was going off to fight for
Ireland." She never saw him again, as the Peelers were hot on
his trail and he dared not go home. He was a mere boy with
regular features and without a hair on his face, and his friends
insisted on his disguising himself as a woman and procured him a
ticket for New York under a female name. As he stood in the
line of female passengers on the dock of the steamer at Cobh
he was thinking of the poor sick mother he had left behind him
(the bravest soul in all Tipperary) and did not notice when his
female name was called by the purser who was checking off the
list of passengers until a girl standing next him nudged him
and said: "They're calling your name." He roused himself and
gulped out in a loud voice: "Here, sir." A naval officer who was
standing with the purser said at once: "That's a man." They
got a stewardess to examine him and she immediately found a
turned up trousers under his woman's dress. He was taken off
the steamer, tried for High Treason and sentenced to twenty
years' penal servitude. His mother died shortly after.
On our release, he went with William Mackey Lomasney to
Detroit, where later he married Lomasney's sister. A few years
afterward he was drowned in the Detroit River.
There seems to be no doubt that Godfrey Massey, the in-
former, was first assigned to command in Tipperary, the leaders
believing that his fighting record in the Confederate Army was
genuine, but according to Thomas Francis Bourke it was bogus.
When he was arrested at the Limerick Junction the day before
the Rising he fainted, which disposed of the fighting record any-
how, and he immediately turned informer and gave the Govern-
ment all the information he had.
The "bad drop" was in him. He was the illegitimate son of
one of the Limerick Masseys by the wife of a gatekeeper named
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
221
Condon, and he was known by the latter name until he went to
Ireland. Then, glorying in his mother's shame, he took the
name of his real father.
The detachment of Fenians under command of Thomas Fran-
cis Bourke at Ballyhurst Fort, a few miles from the town of
Tipperary, was attacked by British troops on the evening of
March 6 and a few shots were exchanged, but serious resistance
by unarmed men was impossible and the insurgents quickly dis-
persed. Bourke was tried for High Treason in Green Street
Courthouse and sentenced to be hanged, but the sentence was
commuted to penal servitude for life. His great speech in the
dock created more interest than the whole Rising, and was a
splendid oratorical effort.
Michael O'Neill Fogarty, of Kilfeacle, a progressive, prosperous
farmer, was one of the men most active in organizing Tipperary
and was out in the Rising, but, although all his men turned out,
they were unable to accomplish anything, owing to the same
cause that brought failure everywhere else — lack of arms.
Fogarty lost his farm, but escaped to America and died in New
York a few years after his arrival. His fate was like that of many
others. He lost all he had, including his chance of dying on the
battlefield fighting British soldiers. One of the chief results of
the Rising was to drive many of the best men out of Ireland
and force them to seek a living at new occupations and under
most unfavorable conditions in a strange country.
I knew Fogarty well, as he often visited Dublin during the
early 'Sixties and I met him in the Irish People office, the Mecca
of all organization men who visited the Capital. He and I
corresponded regularly and his letters showed that he had a fine
intellect. He was well educated and wrote very well. Physically
he was a splendid Tipperary type — 6 feet 4, broad shouldered
and very powerfully built, but with a slight stoop. After Charles
J. Kickham, Denis Dowling Mulcahy and Rody Kickham (first
cousin of Charles) , Fogarty was the chief figure of the move-
ment in Tipperary. Rody was, perhaps, the most popular of
all except the author of "Knocknagow", because of his prowess
as an athlete. The boys always called him "Rody Kick", not for
brevity, but in admiration of his agility in kicking football.
All the Tipperary men I met in those days were tall, athletic
fellows.
Captain Lawrence O'Brien, a Tipperary man by birth, was
arrested before the Rising and was in Clonmel Jail when it
occurred. His skillfully executed escape from the jail after the
Rising created a great sensation. The following sketch of him
222 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
is taken from the official History of the Ninth Connecticut Volun-
teers:
"Captain Lawrence O'Brien, born in Cahir, County Tip-
perary, Ireland, April 7, 1842; son of Edward and Elizabeth
(Hammel) O'Brien. When ten years of age, he was brought
to this country by his parents. They finally settled in New
Haven, Conn., where Lawrence attended St. Patrick's paro-
chial school. He learned the trade of bricklayer and was
employed thereat when the Civil War broke out. He had
long been interested in military matters and was an active
member of the Emmet Guard, of New Haven. He enlisted
in the Ninth Regiment August 30, 1861, assisted Captain Pat-
rick Garvey in organizing Company B, and was commis-
sioned First Lieutenant of the Company. He was a splendid
officer, and was promoted Captain of Company D, October 15,
1862. He participated with his regiment in all the move-
ments of the latter and possessed rare tact, judgment and
ability. He was honorably discharged October 26, 1864, his
term of service having expired. He was prominently iden-
tified with the Fenian movement and in 1867 went to Ire-
land, like many other gallant Union officers, in furtherance
of the cause of Irish freedom. He was captured by the
enemy, confined in Clonmel Prison and, later, astonished
the British by escaping therefrom. The Croffut-Morris work
speaks of Captain O'Brien as 'a brave and efficient officer,
fertile in expedients.' "
After his return from Ireland Captain Larry O'Brien became
a builder in New Haven and soon became prosperous. He was
one of the founders of the Clan-na-Gael in New Haven and was
associated with James Reynolds in the organization of the
Catalpa Rescue. He was an active member of the Fenian Vet-
erans' Association and never missed the annual celebration of
the Rising of March 5, 1867. He was very popular among native
Americans on account of his Civil War record and his upstanding
Americanism and was on every local committee in charge of
Revolutionary and Civil War events. At the reception to General
Shafter after his return from the Cuban campaign, the chairman
of the Reception Committee said to the General in introducing
the two veterans of the Civil War: "Captain O'Brien was a
Fenian." "A Fenian?" said General Shafter, "I was a Fenian too.
I gave Tom Sweeney leave of absence to go to Canada."
Shafter after serving as a General of Volunteers in the Civil
War became Colonel of the First Regiment of the Regular Army
and Sweeney was Major.
Captain O'Brien by ceaseless efforts covering many years
secured the erection of a number of tablets at historic spots in
Connecticut commemorating the aid given by the French to the
Continental Army in the War of the Revolution. Although only
ten years old when he arrived in America, "Captain Larry" pre-
served his Tipperary accent to the day of his death.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE SIEGE OF KILMALLOCK.
Insurgents, Led by Captain Dunn, Made an Ineffectual Attempt
to Capture the Police Barrack — Narrative of P. N. Kennedy,
Who Took Part in Fighting.
The only serious fighting in Limerick was at Kilmallock,
where the Fenians attacked the police barrack, but were defeated,
mainly by the arrival of a small reinforcement of police from
Kilfinane.
The late P. N. Kennedy of Perth Amboy, N. J., who took part
as a mere boy in the fighting at Kilmallock, wrote an article in
the Gaelic American in 1906 giving his experiences in the Fenian
movement. The following is the portion of the article in which
he tells of the fighting in Kilmallock:
"In the afternoon of this day (March 5) I received orders to
be at a certain place at 10 P. M., where I met nine or ten others
of our friends and also a man who had just returned from the
United States, and whom I previously knew. He gave us instruc-
tions how to proceed and left us for some other duty. One of
our party assumed command for the present and we then pro-
ceeded to collect guns, on the location of which we had pre-
viously informed ourselves. In performing this duty we fell in
with and made prisoner of a mounted policeman who was the
bearer of despatches. Those we seized, together with the arms
which he carried, his horse and furnishings. This policeman,
who said his name was O'Connor, and who was treated humanely
by his captors while held as a prisoner, turned out to be one of
the most zealous prosecutors of those of us who were taken
prisoners after the fight, but while in our custody he acted the
craven.
"Having fulfilled our orders we proceeded to join the main
body who were stationed at a point on the opposite side of the
town from where we were. In order to do this it was necessary
to make a detour of about a mile and a half so as to avoid a
possible military patrol on the highway, our party being consid-
ered too small for such a contingency, besides being encumbered
with the arms we had collected, a prisoner and the prisoner's
horse.
"For a thorough understanding of the situation it might be
well to give a short sketch of the town itself: Kilmallock is in
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224
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Limerick County, twenty miles from the city of that name. It
is beautifully located in the midst of some of the most fertile
plains to be found in the whole country. A small stream which
has its source in the Galtee Mountains, flows by the town and
is spanned by two stone bridges. It was formerly a walled town
and a part of the wall still remains, as well as the ruins of an
ancient abbey and two old castles which still stand, one on each
of the two principal streets of which the town is partly com-
posed, and which intersect each other at right angles.
"Those two principal streets contain the business part of the
town, and at their extremities debouch in eight different direc-
tions. I am particular in calling attention to those eight dif-
ferent roads because of the fact that in our attacks on the
barrack in Kilmallock the enemy were liable to be reinforced
from five different points which those roads led to, and which
afterwards proved to be the case in some instances. It is un-
necessary to say that those points had to be protected as much as
our limited means would warrant.
"The nine or ten which constituted our group having accom-
plished the purpose for which we were detailed, proceeded to
join the main body, taking our prisoner with us. In order to
accomplish this safely it was necessary to make a detour, as
stated above, marching southward outside the town's wall and
between that and the lake which is situated west of the town.
After a march of about two miles we joined the main body, who
were stationed in a field close by a whitethorn hedge and directly
in front of the barrack, and within gunshot of it, which they
were preparing to attack. The commander of our little party
made his report to Captain Dunn, who was in chief command,
and who, after having complimented us, placed us in the ranks
to await orders.
"It is necessary for me to digress a little here that I may
describe the barrack, its location, its surroundings and our rela-
tive positions. The barrack which we were about to attack was
a strong three-story building of stone, erected a few years pre-
viously, and was garrisoned at this time by twenty-four men,
including a Head Constable and Sergeant. It was set back from
the street about twenty-five feet, having a courtyard in front
which was fenced off from that street by a stone wall three feet
high, said wall being pierced by a gateway constructed of iron.
This wall, later on in the fight, formed a good breastwork.
"About three or four hundred yards south of the barrack the
road divided in two different directions, one of which led to the
railroad station and so on to Kilfinane, a town at the foot of the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
225
Galtee range of mountains, and four or five miles distant. Where
the other led to is immaterial. At the fork of those two roads
and parallel with them stood one of those institutions of English
civilization known as poorhouses. This poorhouse was con-
structed of stone masonry, and flanked the two roads mentioned
for a considerable distance.
"In the town of Kilfinane there was also a garrison of police,
it being the headquarters of the police Inspector, whose name
was Milling. About half way between the two towns was the
residence of a county magistrate named Weldon. In Kilfinane
there was no danger of attack on the police from any source.
They were therefore at liberty to dispose of themselves as they
thought best. I have already mentioned the necessity of guard-
ing different points from a possible attack on our flanks or rear.
This was the most important one, as the distance from which
the enemy could be reinforced was the shortest. You will, there-
fore, see the urgent necessity of protecting our right flank at this
important point. Our commander recognized this, and therefore
placed thirty men, under the command of one Birmingham, in
the poorhouse, for that purpose.
"Directly in front of the barrack and separated from it by
the street was an open field. This field was bounded on the
south side by a whitehorn hedge which ran at right angles to
the street. Near this hedge, about four o'clock on the morning
of the 6th (which was dark) , we were placed in position prepara-
tory to proceeding to the attack. In the darkness we marched
across the field taking positions at the rear and sides of the
building and some in front at the before-mentioned three-foot
wall, at which latter place I was stationed. I mention this be-
cause from that place we had a full view north and south and I
was therefore in a good position to note what was happening.
"Just as we took our positions a volley came from the upper
stories of the barrack without any results except, because of its
regularity, to impress on us the difference between well-drilled,
well-armed men and an ill-armed, undrilled mob. But if we
were deficient in both the drill and the arms, the spirit existed.
Had the garrison fired a few minutes sooner many lives would
have been sacrificed because of our necessarily exposed position,
but thanks to the extreme darkness and precautions taken, this
calamity was averted. A desultory firing was kept up on our
part until daylight, and was returned in regular military style
by the garrison. In this manner things went on until seven or
eight o'clock, when the garrison was summoned to surrender,
and upon their refusal a party was detailed to use Greek fire for
the purpose of making a breach, at least on one side of the
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
building. While proceeding to execute this plan, we were sur-
prised by a volley on our right flank — that is to say, from the
point where we least expected it, having taken the precaution
of placing thirty men there before daylight for the purpose of
intercepting an expected surprise from the Kilfmane police as
before stated.
"It afterwards turned out that those men, with their leader,
deserted their post before being attacked. The person in com-
mand of the party I knew well. He completely disappeared, and
it was well that he did so. This place could have been held by
five determined men with rifles; and it is to the desertion of this
post that all the casualties which ensued may be attributed. Of
course, because of the reinforcement of the enemy on our right,
and having the garrison immediately in front of us, our position
became untenable, and we were therefore compelled to evacuate
that position for another. To do so was no easy matter, especially
for those of us who were behind the three-foot wall, as we
were exposed to the fire of the reinforcing party on our flank,
and to move any distance at right angles to the wall would,
because of its low altitude, expose us to the fire from the bar-
rack. We were therefore compelled to crawl in single file on
hands and knees to a place of comparative safety. We held our
new position for some considerable time, retreating slowly until
we came to the intersection of the two principal streets, where
we made a stand, and where we were sheltered to some extent
by the buildings.
"By this time the reinforcements arrived at the barrack and
were joined by the garrison who issued therefrom upon the
arrival of the others. It was from then on plain street firing
on both sides, and notwithstanding the superior arms of the
enemy, together with the advantages of drill, and having the
Inspector of Police and a Magistrate at their head, we still held
our position.
"It was now between nine and ten o'clock in the forenoon
when a courier arrived with the information that Massey, the
district commander, was arrested at Limerick Junction. We
understood at once that 'the jig was up'. We instantly realized
our position. We were liable to be hanged for High Treason.
How were we to escape? I believe the few of us who were then
remaining (ten or twelve) , with the heat, passion, bitterness and
anxiety, would just as lief fight it out to a finish then and there
and have done with it. This feeling was superinduced by the
death of a young medical gentleman, Dr. Cleary, who was at that
moment shot directly in front of us and in presence of his two
brothers who participated in the fight. This promising young
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
227
man had just been graduated from a Dublin Medical College,
where he became affiliated with the organization — for the prin-
ciples of which he sacrificed his life. Peace to his memory.
"I said that by this time there were but ten or twelve of us
remaining with our commander. This was partly because of the
fact that a large percentage of our men being armed only with
pikes, and those being useless in a fight of that description, threw
them away and disappeared in the darkness of the early morn-
ing. That, and the desertion of the poorhouse contingent, to-
gether with others who had fowling pieces, left our ranks
thinned to the few I have just stated. We then held council as
to what was best to be done, and on the advice of Captain Dunn
decided that further resistance would be worse than useless.
"We then separated and went in different directions, some
going to the seaports to get out of the country, which proved to
be the worst thing they could have done, as all who attempted it
were arrested and brought back to stand trial for High Treason
(which afterwards was changed to Treason-Felony) , and others
hid themselves, by the connivance of friends, in their respective
localities until opportunities occurred for them to leave the
country. The last I saw of Captain Dunn, was when he was
seated on the policeman's horse bidding us farewell.
"We each took different ways and means of escape (but, to
tell the story of this, as well as the sufferings we endured, would
be tedious) until those of us who succeeded in escaping arrest
finally got out of the country.
"Thus ended the '67 Insurrection in one town in Ireland.
Ill-starred though it was, yet it had its usefulness, and during
all these years I have yet to see the man who regretted his par-
ticipation in it. The spirit which animated them is still extant,
and will be until that which they fought for is accomplished;
that is, the inherent God-given right of every nation to be gov-
erned by the will of its people.
"If Captain Dunn is still 'to the fore' (and I hope he is) and
if these lines should meet his eye, he will probably remember
a young fellow of about eighteen whom he ordered during the
fight to take some men and confiscate any guns owned by non-
combatant residents of the town for our use. Among those resi-
dents was a banker named Bourke who possessed a very fine
revolver. When ordered to surrender it he refused, saying that
he would not part with it except by force. We could, of course,
have killed him or put him hors de combat, and taken it, but
I did not feel justified in doing so, and so reported to the Captain,
who I thought, from his manner, was going to shoot me. He
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
immediately ordered me to follow him and he proceeded to the
banker's office. Upon the Captain's appearance the banker raised
his revolver; so did the Captain raise his. It was a fair fight. It
was a question of who was the quickest, and it proved to be the
Captain. The banker was shot through the neck. I believe he
afterwards recovered; at least I hope so.
"P. N. Kennedy
"Perth Amboy, N. J., February 21, 1906."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PART PLAYED BY CLARE.
Arrest of John Clune and Colonel John G. Healy in Previous
February a Severe Blow — Insurgents, Under Thomas Mc-
Carthy Fennell, Captured Two Coastguard Stations — Col-
onel Healy's Record in the Civil War.
The Rising in Clare would have been more formidable, but
for the arrest of John Clune, with Lieutenant-Colonel John
G. Healy and David Murphy of Limerick as they were passing
through Limerick on their way to Clare in February, as Colonel
O'Connor had just started his insurrection in Kerry. They had
apparently got the original order to start the fight on February
11, but had not heard of the postponement. Had they reached
Clare there would undoubtedly have been a good fight in old
Corcabaiscin and it would very probably have led to a general
Rising throughout the country. Of course, it could not have
succeeded, owing to the lack of arms, but it would have been
of a more serious character than the fiasco of March 5 and to
some extent would have saved the credit of the movement.
The Dalcassians have always been splendid fighters. John
Clune had the confidence of his men who had two hundred
rifles. Colonel Healy was a very capable officer, with a fine fight-
ing record in the Civil War.
John Clune picked Colonel Healy for the command in Clare
because of his belief in his military ability. Besides being a
very good fighter, Healy was a man of great energy, very enter-
prising and resourceful and had he once got started in Clare
would undoubtedly have given a good account of himself. I
knew him very well in later years in New Haven, Conn., where
he was an active member of the Clan-na-Gael, and I always re-
garded his arrest as a great misfortune, coming at the critical
time it did.
The following extract is taken from Healy's record in the of-
ficial History of the Ninth Connecticut Volunteers:
"Colonel John G. Healy, born in New Haven, Conn., Feb-
ruary 12, 1841; son of Thomas and Mary (Gray) Healy.
* * * He learned the trade of marble cutter. Early ac-
quiring a taste for military knowledge, he became a member
of the famous Emmet Guard of New Haven, an organization
that furnished many officers to the army of the Union. He
enlisted in Company C, Ninth Regiment, August 20, 1861;
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230
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
was mustered as First Lieutenant, October 30, that year, and
was promoted Captain of the company, April 15, 1862. Upon
the consolidation of the regiment into the Ninth battalion,
in October, 1864, he being the senior Captain, was given com-
mand of the latter. He was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel
December 1, 1864 and was mustered out with the battalion
in August, 1865. He participated with the Ninth in many
important events of the Civil War, and proved himself a
very superior officer. * * * In 1866, Colonel Healy, in
company with Captain Laurence O'Brien and Lieutenant
Joseph H. Lawler, of the Ninth, C. V., went to Ireland, in con-
nection with the Fenian movement, in which many other
veteran officers of the Union Army participated. Colonel
Healy was arrested in the city of Limerick and was a pris-
oner in the hands of the British for six months. * * *
Still vigorous and active, he undertook, upon the outbreak
of our recent war with Spain, to organize an Irish regiment.
He communicated with the Governor of Connecticut and
received much encouragement. The New Haven Leader, May
3, 1898, stated that 'As the result of a visit to Governor Cooke
at Hartford last week, Colonel John G. Healy is accepting
applications from men who want to enlist in a regiment
which the Colonel intends to organize. * * *' The unex-
pectedly brief duration of the war, however, rendered the
projected regiment unnecessary.
"Speaking of his services in the Civil War, Dr. Rollin
McNeil, of New Haven, pays the following tribute to Colonel
Healy: 'As surgeon of the Ninth Connecticut Veterans Volun-
teers, I was thrown into most intimate relations with him,
and the friendship that resulted has continued during all
the long years since the Civil War. His bravery in the field
is a matter of record. The day Sheridan made his famous
ride, Colonel Healy was in the forefront, the colors in his
hand. I don't think he ever knew the meaning of the word
'fear'. He led his men in battle; he cared for them in camp,
and on the march, with a solicitude that won their affection.
A thorough disciplinarian, when discipline was necessary,
he stood always for the rights of his men, and the honor of
the command. I can recall nothing but pleasant memories
of the days when we marched and camped together. We
were boys then; we are grey-haired veterans now; yet we
still touch elbows with the few old comrades — noble fellows
all of them — who are still this side of the Great Divide, proud
of our regiment, proud of its record, drawing closer to each
other as our ranks grow thinner, keeping alive the old friend-
ship and the old enthusiasms. And so may it be to the
end.' "
Following is the brief report in the Freeman's Journal of
March 7, 1867, of the capture of the Coastguard Stations:
"Reports from County Clare announce that the Coast-
guard Station at Kilbaha was attacked last night and the
arms and ammunition taken. One man was wounded. The
Insurgents then marched towards Kilrush. The Coast Guard
Station at Carrigaholt was also taken with all the arms and
ammunition."
Thomas McCarthy Fennell, who led at Kilbaha, had no mili-
tary training or experience, but was a man of fine character.
He was sentenced to a term of penal servitude, most of which he
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
231
served in Western Australia, and was released, with all the civilian
prisoners, through Gladstone's Partial Amnesty of 1869. The
first time I met him was when he came to New York to lay be-
fore me his plan for the rescue of the Fenian soldier prisoners
whom he had left behind him in Western Australia.
Had the Fenians of Clare been given the opportunity they
would have acquitted themselves well in the Rising and would
have bagged more than two little Coastguard stations. But
Kilbaha and Carrigaholt were victories and they had no failures.
That is a record made by no other county in the Rising of 1867.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
SOME OTHER FIASCOES.
Drogheda Men Fired on by Police While Awaiting Arms — In
mountmellick enough men did not turn out to attack
Barrack — Waterford Did Not Respond to Call and No Fight
Took Place.
There were three other fiascoes, which were not reported in
the newspapers, — one in Drogheda, another in Mountmellick, and
the third in Waterford, but I got the facts from men who par-
ticipated in them.
The Drogheda men were among the best in Ireland, but they
were caught in a trap by the police while waiting for the arms
to be distributed and were dispersed, without any casualties. I
got the story from Harry Mulleda, one of my fellow prisoners
in Chatham, a Dublin man who was assigned to Drogheda as an
officer. Lieutenant-Colonel Leonard of John O'Mahony's Ninety-
ninth New York National Guard regiment, was in command and
the men were assembled in an open space with a semi-circular
wall at the back and the front open to the street, where the
arms were to be distributed to them. A man named Flynn was
to bring them. While they were waiting, the Peelers, appar-
ently notified by a patrol, came on them in the dark, and fired a
volley which hit nobody. Before the police, who were in open
order, had time to reload, the unarmed men rushed them and got
through in safety. That was the end of the Rising in Drogheda.
Colonel Leonard and Mulleda got away with the rest.
Mulleda started for Dublin on foot and about ten or eleven
0-clock next morning met Flynn several miles from Drogheda
with a cartload of arms heading for the town. Flynn explained
that the delay was caused by his inability to get a horse and
cart. The men in Drogheda were naturally very much disap-
pointed at being unable to do their part in the Rising, but none
of them was arrested, as the police did not recognize any of
them in the dark and there was no evidence against them. They
were very bitter against Flynn for his failure to turn up with
the arms, but the arrangements for their distribution were very
bad. I don't know how many rifles were in the cart, but I be-
lieve they were all saved.
Flynn got away to America and lived for many years in South
Brooklyn, where he was a neighbor of John J. Breslin. I had
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
233
told Breslin the story of his failure and he cross-examined Flynn
and introduced him to me. After hearing his explanation,
which included a long story of disappointment in procuring a
horse and cart after the man with whom he had arranged to
get them had gone back on his word, we both made up our
minds that he was an honest man, but a hopelessly "slow coach"
— a kind of Athelstane the Unready, who had no idea of the
value of time. Yet he was a mechanical genius who patented
several inventions in this country. His manner and speech were
those of a very slow man. He was certainly the wrong man to
select for such a mission, but, as he was an old member, all
the Drogheda men knew him and had only themselves to blame
for picking him for the job.
Colonel Leonard, who was a Kerryman, escaped to New York,
where he died a few years later, and Mulleda was sentenced
to seven years' penal servitude as Colonel Ric. Burke's aide in
the purchase of arms in Birmingham. He, too, died in New
York.
There had been a fine Circle in Mountmellick which included
some prominent business men, but several of the best of them
were arrested after the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in
1866, and released on condition of going to America, and many
others left the country to avoid arrest. By the time the Rising
came it was greatly reduced in numbers. When I was there
at the end of 1865, Matthew Fleming, the son of a very well-to-do
publican, was the Centre and his younger brother, George, was
only a mere boy. Both later became prominent business men
in the Stockyards District of Chicago, and while I was living
there I saw George very often. In New York, Michael Lynch,
another Mountmellick man, was very active in the Clan-na-Gael
and I heard all about what happened in the town on March 5
from all three. When over 80 years of age Lynch returned to
Leix and died there.
On the night of the Rising not more than twenty men turned
out with only five or six rifles, so they could not attack the police
barrack. Instead they made a demonstration in front of it and
exchanged some words with the Peelers. They were all ar-
rested next day, and sent to Dublin for trial, but were given only
short terms of imprisonment. My family knew the Flemings
very well and my sisters sat in the gallery of Green Street Court-
house with Mary Anne Fleming, the sister of the boys, who was
a handsome girl. The family always regarded George as a
child, because he was small, while his brother, Matt, was a fine,
strapping fellow; but George was full of courage and had a
fine mind. His sister was very tense during the trial and when
234
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
sentence was imposed she said to my sister with a sigh of relief:
"Well, I don't mind as long as he didn't cry." George Fleming
was not a "cry baby" and he showed lots of courage, both moral
and physical, in the fight with the "Triangle" in Chicago.
Colonel Ricard O'Sullivan Burke was assigned to the com-
mand of Waterford in the Rising, but less than fifty answered
the call. As they were too few in numbers and short of arms
to do anything effective, Burke marched them into Tipperary to
effect a junction with the men there, but when he got across
the border next day the "Tips" were all scattered, so he had to
send his men home without any attempt at a fight.
There was no attempt at a Rising in Connacht. The West
was asleep, but the province was saved thereby from the exodus
which depleted the organization in Munster and partly in Dub-
lin. That enabled the reorganized Movement to do very effec-
tive work in the West, and when I visited Ireland in 1879 Mayo
was one of the banner counties. It was nearly a tie between it
and Cavan, the latter county having 3,500 members and Mayo
over 3,000. Mayo started the Land League, of which the I. R. B.
was the backbone in its fighting days.
Had I been a free man in the month of March, 1867, I would
have voted with James J. O'Kelly in opposition to the Rising
at that time as strenuously as I advocated fighting in 1865 and
the early part of 1866, when we could have fought with reason-
able hope of success. But the real cause of the failure was the
neglect to procure arms when they could have been easily ob-
tained. We talked fight for ten years and failed to provide the
means of fighting, depending on our friends in America to send
an expedition. And that such an expedition was possible was
proved by the Erin's Hope.
PART V,
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE "ERIN'S HOPE" EXPEDITION.
Vessel Set Sail from New York a Month After the Rising Had
Failed, with 8,000 Rifles and 40 Officers — Cruised Half Way
Around Ireland and Got Safely Back to America.
The Erin's Hope expedition was a romantic incident and an
illustration of the confusion and inefficiency into which the move-
ment had fallen owing to the Split. The vessel, originally named
the Jackmel, had been bought by the O'Mahony section of the
organization a considerable time before the expedition started
and the arms which she later carried were in the possession of
the Fenians in New York. But the work of organizing the expe-
dition was very slow. It is probable that nobody in New York
knew the date set for the Rising in Ireland and it was only made
known when the newspapers reported it.
The despatches published in America stated that the attempted
insurrection had been suppressed in one night, and that quiet
reigned all over Ireland. O'Mahony and his friends, however, felt
that this statement was but one more effort on the part of Eng-
land to keep the outside world in ignorance of the true state of
affairs in Ireland. The men in New York were confident that
large bodies of Fenians still held the field, and could continue
to do so for a considerable time. It was on this assumption that
the Jackmel sailed from New York on April 12, 1867.
She was under command of Captain Kavanagh, who had been
a Lieutenant in the Volunteer Navy of the United States during
the Civil War, hoisted the Irish flag on April 29, and changed her
name to the Erin's Hope.
She had 8,000 Springfield rifles (converted into breech-load-
ers) , and 40 officers on board. She arrived in Sligo Bay on May 20,
where Col. Ricard O'Sullivan Burke boarded her and informed
Captain Kavanagh that the Rising had been suppressed two
months previously. As the vessel was short of provisions Captain
Cavanagh had to land somewhere, but conditions made it impos-
sible on the West Coast, so he took the vessel, dodging British
cruisers, half way around the island, and eventually landed thirty
of his passengers at Helvic Head, near Dungarvan, County Water-
235
236
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
ford, commandeering a large fishing boat for the purpose. As the
men had to wade ashore through shallow water and sand, their
trousers bore the marks of the operation and the police were able
to recognize them easily, as in small groups or separately they
walked along the roads. All of them were arrested, but only two,
John Warren and Augustine E. Costello, were convicted and sen-
tenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. The vessel got safely
back to America and discharged her cargo of arms and ammuni-
tion.
Burke's adventures while waiting for the vessel to arrive were
of the most extraordinary kind. His fine, gentlemanly manners
and splendid figure enabled him to impose himself on the local
gentry, including magistrates, as a gentleman of leisure trav-
elling for pleasure. He was the guest of two or three of them,
dined at their tables, was introduced to their friends and allowed
to shoot and fish on their grounds. Their suspicions were never
once aroused and it was only at the trials of Warren and Costello
that they learned of their guest's identity through the testimony
of Buckley, one of the American officers who went ashore at Dun-
garvan. Buckley had fought well in the Civil War, but he ad-
mitted on the witness stand that it was fear of imprisonment
which made him testify against his comrades.
The cruise of the Erin's Hope proved conclusively that an ex-
pedition could have been sent from America to Ireland. If the
vessel had been a steamer she could have performed the feat
much more quickly, but the funds wherewith a steamship could
have been purchased had been spent in the Split. The speed of
the Erin's Hope was not a factor in this instance, however; she
was late anyway. It was in reality two years too late for a cargo
such as she carried to be of most effective service to the Fenians
in Ireland, and to the Cause which they so unselfishly endeavored
to carry to success against tremendous odds.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE MANCHESTER RESCUE.
Colonel Thomas J. Kelly, After Being Chosen Chief Executive
of the I. R. B., Arrested in Manchester, England, with Cap-
tain Deasy — Story of Daring Exploit Told by Ricard O'Sul-
livan Burke.
The following account of events in Manchester, England, in
the Fall of 1867, written by Colonel Ricard O'Sullivan Burke, was
published many years ago in the Gaelic American:
"The change in the structure of the Fenian Brotherhood in
America resulting from the two conventions, at Chicago and
Cincinnati, by which that body passed from a military organiza-
tion, where authority in command was 'centered' in the head, to
a political body, where authority emanated from the units,
brought much disappointment to the members of the Fenian
Brotherhood who were officers in the various armies in the field
in 1863 and 1864.
"These well-equipped, experienced officers were aware of the
fact that an army cannot be commanded by a debating society:
that discussion is not a working substitute for orders, and that
the old form of the Fenian Brotherhood, by reason of its thorough
cohesion and instant obedience to directions, was a far more
effective method of applying force along any worthy field of
effort than the body was which resulted from the two conven-
tions referred to, in which there was no power to give directions
nor discipline to yield obedience.
"This disappointment was still further augmented by the
empty pomp shown in connection with the Fenian Brotherhood in
New York City in 1865, in which modesty and intelligence seem to
have abandoned all effort to the control of absurdity. This condi-
tion was intensified later by the treason to Ireland shown first by
a part of the American Fenian Brotherhood withdrawing re-
sources, personal and material, from the pledged direct aid to
Ireland and apparently applying them towards an attack on
Canada, and secondly, by the remainder of the American Fenian
Brotherhood, which, after a brief interval of adherence to the
pledged duty to Ireland, yielded to the ignorant clamor of the
time, and joined in the treasonable diversion of the personal and
material resources of the remainder of the organization to an
attempt to capture a piece of Canada.
237
238
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
"Both 'wings' of the Organization of the Fenian Brotherhood
thus abandoned their pledged duty to Ireland. The effect of all
this on the Home Organization or I. R. B., was most marked. It
was an appeal to their individual sense of self-reliance, and in
furtherance of the high purpose of the Home Organization, in
1867, a general Convention of the I. R. B. was held in Manchester,
England, about the early part of August (or late in July) . About
three hundred delegates came from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and
England.
"At this Convention Captain James Murphy, of the Twentieth
Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers, was Chairman; Captain
Ricard O'S. Burke (myself) of the Fifteenth Regiment, New York
Engineers, Headquarters Army of the Potomac, was Secretary.
The Convention fully reviewed the various developments in the
United States. The abandonment by James Stephens of the Home
Organization, following the abandonment of the latter by each
of the 'wings' in America, intensified the purpose of the Home
Organization to stand erect, self-reliant and firm of purpose,
— even if every Irishman in America had become dead to a sense
of duty to Ireland.
* • • *
"The prisons in Ireland were filled, and large numbers of Irish
prisoners from the many trials by Special Commissions in Ireland
were sent to and confined in the various penal establishments of
England. Deputy Chief Organizer General William G. Halpin
being in prison, Colonel Thomas J. Kelly continued in charge,
after Stephens abandoned the Organization, and was the author-
ity which called this Convention in 1867 in Manchester.
"The position of Chief Executive of the Irish Republican
Brotherhood was filled by the unanimous election of Colonel
Thomas J. Kelly. And, after a great deal of thought was given
to the necessities of the Home Organization, a plan was pre-
pared by me as Secretary, and presented to the Convention in the
form of Resolutions, which were passed by an overwhelming vote.
The chief provisions of this measure may be paraphrased as fol-
lows:
"1. The Home Organization to be self-sustaining, each mem-
ber paying into the local Circle a certain sum per week.
"2. The American officers to be located in the various popu-
lous centres, according to the strength of the organization in
each centre or city, and to be maintained by the funds of the
local Circle or Circles.
"3. One of the American officers thus assigned by Headquar-
ters to any city was to serve as intermediary through whom the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
239
Executive could be reached without delay by the Centres of the
local Circles.
"4. The honest and deceived members of the 'wings' in Amer-
ica, whose hatred of England was appealed to in order to lead
them into channels of effort which in fact resulted in with-
drawing their aid from the I. R. B., were now to be approached
and organized into a new body — in America — the good men of
the 'wings' in America were to be selected and formed into a
new American body, working directly with the Home Organiza-
tion. The new organization in America to be known as the
Clan-na-Gael.
"These resolutions had other provisions, not necessary to cite
here. The fourth provision went into active operation without
delay, and soon after, the Napper Tandy Club was organized in
New York, being the first Club of the Clan-na-Gael.
"After the Convention Colonel Kelly continued his Headquar-
ters in the City of Manchester. Captain James Murphy was
placed in general charge of Scotland; Captain Mackey acted
generally for southern Ireland; Edmund O'Donovan was to per-
form like duty for northern Ireland, and Captain Ricard O'Sulli-
van Burke was in a general way to give attention to England and
Wales and to any special duty arising.
"Some officers, who had served in the armies of the United
States in various ranks, commissioned and non-commissioned,
were in the cities in England. These officers included Timothy
Deasy, who was a Captain in Colonel Cass's celebrated Irish
Regiment, the 9th Mass. Inf. Vols.; Captain Michael O'Brien,
who was a civil employee of the Engineer Corps of the Army of
* the Potomac in 1863 under Captain (then First Lieutenant) Ricard
O'Sullivan Burke, subsequently entering the army and becoming
a non-commissioned officer; and Captain O'Meagher Condon, who
had served from late in 1862 to June, 1864, a non-commissioned
officer, being First Sergeant at latter date in K Company, 164th
Regiment, N. Y. Vol. Infantry. Captain Deasy was quite familiar
with the conditions in Liverpool, and it was intended to place
him in that city; Captain Edward O'Meagher Condon was made
Intermediary for Manchester.
"If there was anything necessary to convince one of the in-
sincerity of Roberts and Sweeny in their 'war' on Canada, their
sending agents into England to win recruits for their cause would
readily supply it. These agents asked Irishmen in London to
join the party going to capture Canada so that Ireland might thus
be made free! Could anything be more absurd? And yet two
Circles in London, Notting Hill and Camberwell, could not at
240
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
first see any absurdity in it, for they joined the cause these
agents represented. This action of these two Circles hurried me
at once to London. I had only just got back to England from a
stay of twelve days in Paris, waiting there that time for the
return of our agent, Dr. Hamilton (William O'Donovan) , who
was absent from the Hotel de Suez, Rue de Four, St. Germain.
I met the officers of these two Circles in the presence of the
agents of the 'Canadian' wing and after discussion the two Circles
came back to their duty, rejecting the Irish freedom-via-
Canada doctrine. I had barely finished healing this trouble in
London when a telegram reached me advising me of serious
trouble in Manchester and asking me to go there at once. I
started to Manchester by the first train but had some unavoid-
able delays to meet before I got there.
"I found on arriving in Manchester a very serious situation.
The Chief Executive, Colonel Thomas J. Kelly, and one of the
two American officers, Captain Timothy Deasy, were in the hands
of the enemy. They were arrested the night of September 10
or rather the morning of September 11, 1867, after leaving a
meeting called by the Circle officers of Manchester. On the
morning of September 11 both officers were brought before a
magistrate and remanded for a week. The Centres and Sub-
Centres of the local organizations had made great progress in
the procuring of arms and ammunition and otherwise getting
ready to rescue these two officers should I so direct, when I
had looked the situation over. After I got to Manchester Captain
Michael O'Brien, who had served in a civil capacity with me in
the Engineer Corps of the army, and later with me in England in
1866, gave me complete information as to the local situation.
"On the evening of September 17, a final meeting prior to any
action was called. At this meeting the following men of the
local Circles volunteered to undertake the rescue:
"James Lavery, John Neary, Thomas O'Bolger, Peter Ryan,
William Melvin, Michael Larkin, Timothy Featherstone, Charles
Moorehouse, Peter Rice, William Phillip Allen, Patrick Bloom-
field, John Stoneham, Joseph Keeley, John Ryan, James Cahill,
and the two American officers, Michael O'Brien and Edward
O'Meagher Condon.
"From these volunteers I called for two men who were willing
to undertake extra hazardous duty. Of those who volunteered
I selected Thomas O'Bolger and Peter Ryan. I advised the
larger body as to their conduct at and after the rescue, particu-
larly dwelling upon the condition governing duty that no life
was to be taken unless the taking of it was necessary to the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
241
success of the rescue, then it was to be taken without an in-
stant's hesitation. After arranging to have the main body of
the volunteers meet at a designated place to get more arms and
ammunition in the morning, and privately instructing the two
special volunteers as to the duty they were to do, and directing
them to meet me near the Court House at which our officers
(the prisoners) would again appear on September 18, the meeting
was closed and all went quietly to their homes.
"These names here given I take from a report of the rescue
made by Thomas O'Bolger to me some years afterwards. I had
no relations with the local men, dealing with the resident Inter-
mediary in Manchester and meeting the officers of the Circles
in any locality only on special occasions like that which car-
ried me to London to the officers of the Notting Hill and Cam-
berwell Circles before stated.
"On the morning of September 18 the main body of the vol-
unteers, gradually by ones and twos got to the point selected
for the supply of more arms and ammunition, and further in-
structions were privately given Captains Michael O'Brien and
Edward O'Meagher Condon — the latter I charged with provid-
ing everything necessary to get our officers quickly out of the
van and into our own hands, and to see them away to a place
or places of security. To Captain O'Brien I gave the duty of
using our little force to cover the retreat of our rescued officers,
to hold the police and the soldiers, who it afterwards appeared
had individually joined them, and the mob back; to spread our
boys out on the right and left and prevent the vast mob from
flanking them, and while doing this to retire at intervals, while
fronting the enemy, the flankers passing through the centre
of the front, while those who held the centre moved outward
to the rear, taking a new position on the flanks. The force
covering the retreat to continue fronting the enemy while re-
tiring until the rescued officers had disappeared, then the cov-
ering force was to get away.
"After passing up Hyde Road beyond the railway crossing,
selecting the part just beyond the railroad bridge as the point
of attack on Hyde Road, arranging as to signals, and direct-
ing that the main body of the rescue party should avoid any
grouping, coming together only when the signal was given, I
went to the front of the Court House and made my headquarters
at the Red Lion Inn, nearly opposite the Court House. O'Bolger
and Ryan were sent into the Court House to watch everything
that took place, and one of them at a time was quietly to go
out and advise me of the progress of affairs, coming to the Red
Lion Inn for that purpose. I was informed by both O'Bolger
242
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
and Ryan of their purpose to shoot John J. Corydon should he
appear to identify Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy. I said that
while the death of the informer, Corydon, was much to be de-
sired, yet taking his life under existing circumstances, laudable
and patriotic as it would otherwise be, would now work the ruin
and failure of the purpose then in hand, as the enemy naturally
would safeguard the prisoners, Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy,
by sending so strong a force with the van that our little handful
of men, poorly armed as they were, would be entirely incapable
of overcoming such a force as would be escorting the van in the
event of the alarm of the enemy being excited by the killing in
the heart of the Court House of the scoundrel, Corydon.
"About three o'clock I was advised of the identification by a
police official of our two men and their remand to jail, and the
passing of the prisoners into the van. O'Bolger and Ryan were to
watch the actual entrance into the van of the two prisoners,
then precede the van in a cab and give the signal agreed upon.
A great crowd of people had gathered in the area in front of
the Court House. A little earlier, when the crowd was not so
large, I passed among them, keeping my eye on the Court House
door watching for the exit of either of my two men, but I soon
returned to my headquarters, as I thought the detectives by the
Court House were showing interest in the crowd. Going through
the crowd just after the van had passed out to go to Bellevue
Jail up on Hyde Road, to get a cab, I noticed quite a commotion
in the crowd, which in the judgment of the officials was made
up of friends of the two Irish officers. Immediately the detec-
tives caught at several of the crowd, myself among them, but
greater commotion near me alarmed the officers in plain clothes
and I managed to break away from them, dodging through the
crowd, and made my escape by side streets. When I had got far
enough away to consider myself secure, I sought a cab, and find-
ing one drove towards Hyde Road, and then along it towards the
selected point. When I had gone some distance towards the
railroad bridge crossing Hyde Road crowds of people were in the
road, and going to where the crowd was thickest, I got out of the
cab, and soon learned from the excited people that 'the Fenians
had shot a whole lot of people and murdered the police.' Fur-
ther inquiries, made as a newspaper man, soon gave me the in-
formation of the success of the rescue. * * * I then drove
back and went to my headquarters for the balance of the day,
No. 16 Acton Street — the premises of John Nolan, the head of the
Ancient Order of Hibernians — where I received information as to
details of the arrests made by the terror-stricken police and the
safety of the rescued officers. I left these headquarters Sep-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
243
tember 19, the next day, and went to the same premises where
Colonel Kelly was concealed, as his former headquarters was no
longer considered safe, and was glad to give up to him my acting
appointment to his duties which at the request of the head
officers in Ireland and Scotland I had assumed until a conven-
tion would decide upon his successor. He was now his own suc-
cessor, entirely owing to the energy, loyalty and courage of the
officers of the local Circles — that splendid group of the I. R. B.
who, by their gallantry made themselves immortal.
"In the actual fact of the rescue, the initiative was taken by
James Cahill in killing one of the horses which brought the van
to a stop.
"During the rescue itself, James Lavery, Thomas O'Bolger,
Peter Ryan, Peter Rice and James Cahill were most energetic.
Lavery was the senior officer of the local Circle, and was every-
where encouraging and directing. Captain Michael O'Brien and
Larkin had strolled up Hyde Road, loitering around waiting for
the arrival of the van. Hearing the shooting they hurried back
and Captain O'Brien rushed in to cover the retreat of the two
rescued officers in which Thomas O'Bolger, Larkin and a few
others of the gallant little band were engaged. In this they suc-
ceeded, but Larkin and Captain O'Brien were arrested, as was
also young Allen, and were sacrificed to satisfy that English law
which their heroism had humiliated and defied. Whatever honor
may flow to the Irish Cause from the gallantry shown at the
Manchester Rescue is owing entirely to the little band of the
Irish Republican Brotherhood who actually accomplished it. I
only gave form and direction to that force which their loyalty
and value created."
"RlCARD O'SULLIVAN BURKE."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE MANCHESTER MARTYRS.
Rescue of Kelly and Deasy Threw England Into a Panic —
Shooting of Sergeant Brett Purely Accidental — Trial of
Allen, Larkin and O'Brien a Travesty of Justice — Their
Execution a Judicial Murder.
The Rescue of Kelly and Deasy from the prison van in Man-
chester on September 18, 1867, was the boldest stroke of the
Fenian Movement. It threw England into a panic of fear and
rage and gave her warning that the movement she thought she
had completely crushed in March was still alive and its spirit
unbroken.
In broad daylight a handful of Irishmen in the heart of one
of England's biggest cities, with a military garrison and a large
police force, wrested from her grasp two of their Chiefs whom
she was about to send to convict cells, got them safely away
and enabled them to reach the United States while a big reward
was offered for their recapture and England's whole detective
force was searching for them. The reward would have been a
fortune to some of those who knew the whereabouts of the
rescued men, but the offer tempted none of them to give the
Government a scintilla of information.
Only four of the twenty-three rescuers were arrested (with
several others who had nothing to do with it) . Three of them —
William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O'Brien —
were hanged after a trial that was a travesty of justice which
made their execution a judicial murder. England hoped to ter-
rorize the Irish by taking Irish lives, but she only fanned the
spirit of patriotism into a new flame and brought thousands
of recruits to the organization.
Colonel Ricard O'Sullivan Burke, whose account of the re-
organization of the movement is quoted in the previous chapter,
describes the preparations for the Rescue and gives the names of
the rescuers. Most of the latter were in New York and a few in
Boston when I landed in January, 1871, and I got the whole in-
side history from them.
Kelly and Deasy were arrested while returning late at night
from a courtmartial on Edward O'Meagher Condon, who had
very badly misconducted himself, but who later claimed the
244
THE MANCHESTER MARTYRS
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
245
chief credit for the Rescue, asserting that he was in command.
His claim was absurd, but repetition for half a century has
deceived many thousands of Irishmen.
The rescuers were handicapped by lack of implements to
break open the door of the van. Condon was assigned the duty
of procuring a sledge, crowbar and a set of burglar's tools, but he
failed to bring them.
They were trying to batter the door open with stones and
chunks of wood, which they found lying around, when one of
them got the notion that he could shoot the lock open by firing
into the keyhole. He was a very small, but sturdy Dublin man
named Peter Rice, who later lived many years in New York and
died in his native city. Police Sergeant Brett, in charge of the
prisoners, had a seat next the door and, being unable to see
clearly through the slats (which sloped downward) was peering
out through the keyhole. Rice, who, of course, could not see
him, fired his revolver through the keyhole; the bullet passed
into Brett's eye and killed him — a fact of which Rice was igno-
rant. This was the "murder" for which Allen, Larkin and
O'Brien were hanged.
One of the women prisoners took the keys out of Brett's
pocket and dropped them through the slats to the rescuing
party outside. They promptly opened the door, let the two of-
ficers out and the Rescue was accomplished. They were not
provided even with files to cut the handcuffs and the rescued
men had to be taken, still fettered, across a vacant lot and over
a wall to another road, from where they were quickly taken to
a place of safety.
Nothing that had ever occurred in England created such a wild
panic. The English people lost their heads and went into a
frenzy of rage against the Irish. Every individual Irishman in
England was made a special object of attack, as if he were person-
ally responsible for what had occurred in Manchester. In Man-
chester itself Irishmen were beaten by mobs, and they were dis-
charged by wholesale from their employment. Thousands of
special constables were enrolled and a house to house search
was carried out for those suspected of participation in the
Rescue. A large number of Irishmen were arrested on suspi-
cion,— most of them merely because they were Irish, and others
who just happened to be in the neighborhood at the time of the
rescue.
The English have a hobby for describing themselves as "calm"
when they have completely lost control of their nerves, and this
mythical "calmness" figured extensively in the newspaper de-
246
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
scriptions of the situation in Manchester following the Rescue.
Men with ordinary common sense would have known that the
effort of the Fenians could not be repeated in the case of the
men arrested for connection with the Rescue, but every act of
the authorities was based on the absurd belief that Manchester
was filled with armed groups of Irishmen ready to repeat at
any moment the stroke delivered under the railway arch, when,
as a matter of fact, every man who had any hand in the Rescue
had sought safety in flight from that city.
Tom O'Bolger, a Kilkenny shoemaker, who was one of the
boldest and most resourceful men in the Rescue party, made his
way to London immediately and clipped from the Times and put
in a scrap-book the despatches describing the situation in Man-
chester. They afford most interesting reading and throw a com-
ical light on the "calmness" of the English people. Instead of
being "calm", they were in as great a panic as if a foreign army
had captured Liverpool and was marching on Manchester. The
horses drawing the prison van conveying the five men, who
were charged with the "murder" of Brett, from Salford Jail to
the court house in Manchester went at a fast trot, apparently
to avoid being ambushed, and a company of Highlanders form-
ing the escort had to go at the double quick to keep up with it.
Why cavalry was not selected for the escort is one of those
mysteries that are never absent from British military operations.
Angry mobs surrounded the courthouse and filled the streets
in the immediate neighborhood; they hooted and insulted the
prisoners. All mobs are more or less cowardly, but English mobs
are both cowardly and cruel. Their temper towards the men on
trial showed that they would lynch them if they could get at
them. The whole people, including the judges and the jurymen,
were inflamed by passion and anti-Irish prejudice, and the
Bench took no pains to conceal it. The manly, defiant bearing
of the men in the dock was bitterly resented and the law was
strained against them whenever a point of law had to be de-
cided. Ernest Jones, the Chartist leader, who defended them,
was a fine type of Englishman and an able lawyer, but he quickly
realized that legal talent and evidence as to the facts of the
case were of no avail against inflamed hatred and passion on
the bench and in the jury box.
The evidence against the indicted men all came from the
policemen and the thieves and fallen women who were in the
van. Everyone brought before them was promptly identified as
one of the rescuing party. Among them was a marine named
Maguire, who was on furlough and happened to be in the neigh-
borhood at the time of the Rescue. He had a strong Irish ac-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
247
cent, and that was enough. He was fully identified by those
denizens of the prison and duly convicted by the jury. The re-
porters at the trial were struck by the utter improbability of
Maguire having anything to do with the Rescue and they joined
in a petition to the Home Secretary pleading for his release.
He had been convicted on exactly the same evidence as Allen,
Larkin and O'Brien, who were later executed, and Edward
O'Meagher Condon, whose sentence of death was commuted to
penal servitude for life, through the intervention of the Ameri-
can Government because he was a citizen of the United States.
But the evidence that was so defective in Maguire's case as to
procure his release was quite sufficient to hang the other three.
The case of Patrick Meledy was even more striking. Meledy,
who was a vain, light-headed fellow of no character, a Dublin
man, was in London at the time of the Rescue. He had a hobby
for amateur theatricals, and he foolishly told some of his inti-
mates that he had taken part in the Rescue. The story reached
the police, he was arrested, taken to Manchester and "identified"
fully by the criminal witnesses as one of those they had seen
taking part in the attack on the van. He was convicted, spent
ten years in prison, and this gave him a character among
Nationalists in America which he used to good advantage in
many questionable financial operations on a small scale. He had
never been in Manchester in his life and owed his conviction to
his loose tongue.
Allen, Larkin and O'Brien were hanged on November 23rd,
1867. Their names are enshrined in the hearts of the Irish
people, and they shall ever be gratefully remembered as "The
Manchester Martyrs".
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION.
Attempt to Rescue Colonel Ric Burke by Making Breach in
Prison Wall Failed — Explosion Unfortunately Resulted in
Deaths Among Women and Children on the Street— Daring
Effort Had Good Political Results Later.
Not long after the Manchester Rescue, Colonel Ricard O'Sul-
livan Burke was arrested. He was charged with having pur-
chased arms in England for the Fenians, and was lodged in
Clerkenwell Prison, London.
There were two wings of the Irish Republican Brotherhood
in London at that time. One of these had been organized earlier
that year by Ric Burke himself in conjunction with Colonel
Thomas J. Kelly, and the other by James J. O'Kelly and J. I. C.
Clarke. The Centre of one of the Circles of the Burke-Kelly
group was a young man named Jeremiah O'Sullivan who was
born near Cahirdaniel, County Kerry, in 1845.
Under the command of Captain James Murphy, O'Sullivan
managed to get into communication with Ric Burke in Clerken-
well Prison and arrangements were made for his rescue. The
yard in which the prisoners exercised at a certain time each day
was separated from the street only by a high wall, and the
rescuers planned to blow a hole in the latter large enough to
enable Burke to rush through to his waiting friends outside.
It was a priest who supplied the money to buy the powder
(dynamite had not then become known), but they bought sev-
eral hundred pounds of it, — far too much. A smaller quantity
would have been quite enough to make the hole and would not
have caused the loss of life among women and children, which
actually took place. There was a British spy among the Fenians,
and the information he gave resulted in Burke being placed in a
cell at the time set for the explosion, so that all the trouble
and loss of life was rendered useless. O'Sullivan brought up the
powder in a barrel which he wheeled in a pushcart, but when
the explosion took place, the rescuers discovered at once that
Burke was not among the prisoners in the yard, so they had to
make their escape as best they could in the confusion and panic
which prevailed in the vicinity of the prison. This was in De-
cember, 1867.
248
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
249
O'Sullivan was a lithe young man of athletic build, a fine
runner and jumper, and to these qualities he owed his escape.
There was a heavily laden brewery wagon passing at the time
and the driver, a big, corpulent man, dropped from his seat and
threw his arms around O'Sullivan as he was running past, cry-
ing: "You are a thief."
O'Sullivan told him he was not a thief, but the driver said he
would hold him anyhow for the police, who were running up at
the time. O'Sullivan said: "The devil you will", reached to his
pocket with his right hand, pulled out a big horsepistol (of which
he had two) , and hit him a hard blow on the head with the butt.
The man dropped to the ground and never got up again. His
blood had been poisoned by drinking ale too freely and the blow
killed him.
The police were very close on O'Sullivan by this time, but he
dashed off and soon outdistanced them. They followed in relays
however, and kept him in sight. He was a younger man than any
of his pursuers, in perfect condition, and he knew the neighbor-
hood, so he had every advantage over them. He ran five miles
without stopping and at one point had to cross a stream eighteen
feet wide. He cleared it easily, but the policemen were unable
to make it. One of them who attempted the jump fell into the
water and by the time he had clambered up the opposite bank
O'Sullivan was safe, and all that the police, — who were armed
with revolvers at that time, on account of the Manchester
Rescue, — could do was to fire several shots after him, all of which
missed.
After a short time spent in concealment among trusted
friends, O'Sullivan took passage for America under a false name,
and landed safely in New York, where he remained until his
death. He was a very healthy man of temperate habits, and
would undoubtedly have lived many years longer but for two
accidents which happened to him while at work. The first of
these necessitated the amputation of one of his toes and he nar-
rowly escaped blood-poisoning. Some years later he was hurt
internally by another accident, cancer developed and he suffered
greatly for a considerable time before his death.
Mr. O'Sullivan joined the Clan-na-Gael soon after his arrival
in New York and remained an active member until illness pre-
vented him from attending meetings. He belonged to the Bunker
Hill Club in the Bronx and was also a member of the I. R. B.
Veterans' Association. He took a vigorous part in the Land
League until Parnell was deposed from the leadership, when, like
most of the old Fenians, he dropped out and confined his activi-
250
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
ties to the Clan-na-Gael until the Friends of Irish Freedom was
organized. He was a fluent Gaelic speaker and a very well read
man.
He died on Monday, November 6, 1922, and was interred in
Calvary Cemetery.
While the deaths among the English civilians was regrettable,
and though the immediate purpose of this dynamite operation
failed of accomplishment, the Clerkenwell incident, coming so
soon after the daring rescue at Manchester, scared the Govern-
ment and people of England and had good results later.
When William E. Gladstone in 1869 introduced the Bill to dis-
establish the Protestant Church in Ireland (in which the Irish
people were not particularly interested) he admitted in his
speech that his new outlook on Irish affairs was due to the in-
tensity of Fenianism. His remarks on that occasion proved a
stronger argument in favor of physical force — and even of Ter-
rorism— on the part of Ireland to secure justice and freedom,
than any Irishman ever made.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE CATALPA RESCUE.
Expedition that Brought Humiliation to England Organized and
Financed by the Clan-na-Gael — Six Members of Fenian
Organization in British Army, Sentenced to Penal Servi-
tude for Life, Taken from an English Prison in Western
Australia After They had Served Ten Years — Irish Skill and
Yankee Grit Landed Them as Free Men on Friendly Shores
of America.
The detailed story of the "Catalpa Rescue" was published by
me in the Gaelic American in 1904. Weekly instalments appeared
from July 16 to the end of October of that year, so that the
narrative as then written is entirely too long to reproduce here.
But, as most of the principal actors in the Catalpa incident
were active participants in the Fenian organization of '65 and
'66 in Ireland, this volume would not be complete without a
recital of the most interesting features of the Rescue.
The last batch of Fenian prisoners tried in the civil courts
from 1865 to 1867 were released from prison in 1871, on condi-
tion that they reside out of Ireland. These included the men
who under James Stephens had been instrumental in organizing
a strong section of the Fenian organization in the British army,
but the convicted soldiers whom they induced to join were still
held prisoners, most of them at Fremantle, Western Australia.
Gladstone, who was Premier of England at the time, had yielded
to a strong pressure of public opinion, brought about by the Am-
nesty agitation led by Isaac Butt, George Henry Moore and John
Nolan, and wanted to release all the prisoners, but a character-
istic English reason prevented it. The Duke of Cambridge, Com-
mander-in-Chief of the British army, interposed an objection
against the military prisoners and his word was law with his
august cousin Queen Victoria. Releasing these Fenian soldiers,
he said, would be subversive of discipline in the army, and as the
duke was a great soldier, as soldiers go near the top of the army
in England, that settled it. He had won distinction in the
Crimea by promptly falling from his horse at the opening of the
battle of the Alma and had to nurse a dislocated shoulder at
home in England during the balance of the war. But Cambridge
knew all about discipline and red tape and he was quite sure it
251
252
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
would have a bad effect on the army to let those Fenian fel-
lows free.
When the released Fenian civilian prisoners who had been
incarcerated in England (of whom I was one) arrived in New
York in 1871, a public reception was given to them under the aus-
pices of the Clan-na-Gael, which had then been in existence
about four years, and which at the date I write of included in its
ranks many men from both wings of the Fenian Brotherhood.
Some months later, a newspaper containing an account of the re-
ception, and the New York address of Peter Curran, found its
way into the prison at Fremantle. Curran was the man at whose
house in Dublin a picked body of soldiers had been brought to
meet the famous Captain McCafferty in 1866, with a view to
organizing a cavalry corps under his command. In due course he
received the following letter from Martin Hogan:
"Perth, Western Australia,
"May 20th, 1871.
"My dear Friend:
"In order that you may recollect who it is that addresses
you, you will remember on the night of January 17th, 1866,
some of the Fifth Dragoon Guards being in the old house in
Clare Lane with John Devoy and Captain McCafferty. I am
one of that unfortunate band and am now under sentence
of life penal servitude in one of the darkest corners of the
earth, and as far as we can learn from any small news that
chances to reach us, we appear to be forgotten, with no pros-
pect before us but to be left in hopeless slavery to the tender
mercies of the Norman wolf.
"But, my dear friend, it is not my hard fate I deplore, for
I willingly bear it for the cause of dear old Ireland, but I must
feel sad at the thought of being forgotten, and neglected by
those more fortunate companions in enterprise who have suc-
ceeded in eluding the grasp of the oppressor. If I had the
means I could get away from here any time. I therefore ad-
dress you in the hope that you will endeavor to procure and
send me pecuniary help for that purpose and I will soon be
with you.
"Give my love and regards to all old friends — Roantree,
Devoy, Burke (General) , McCafferty, Captain Holden, O'Dono-
van Rossa, St. Clair and others, not forgetting yourself and
Mrs., and believe me that, even should it be my fate to perish
in this villainous dungeon of the world, the last pulse of my
heart shall beat 'God Save Ireland.'
"Direct your letter to Rev. Father McCabe, Fremantle. Do
not put my name on the outside of the letter.
"Yours truly,
"Martin J. Hogan."
This letter was at once given to me, and I promptly answered
it. Most of the evidence upon which the soldiers were convicted
related meetings with me, and I therefore felt that I, more than
any man then living, ought to do my utmost for these Fenian
soldiers. But at that time nothing could be done except in the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
253
way of influencing opinion in the Clan-na-Gael in favor of some
plan to effect their release, and most men considered the task
of releasing the prisoners impossible of accomplishment.
In a few months another letter came from Hogan, and later,
one from James Wilson (of the same regiment), containing more
accurate and detailed descriptions of how the prisoners were
situated, but the plans proposed for rescue were wholly imprac-
tical. Thomas McCarthy Fennell, who had been released from
Australia several years previously with the civilian prisoners, was
the first man in America to suggest a practical idea, which was
to send an American vessel, loaded with grain or some other
cargo and later pick up the prisoners. A proposition that the
organization undertake the rescue of the prisoners was laid by
me in 1872 and 1873 before the then heads of the Clan-na-Gael,
but they doubted their ability to raise the funds.
So matters drifted until July 1874, when a Convention held in
Baltimore decided to take up the project. There were sixty-one
delegates present and as some of them were not at first favorable
to my proposal, they had to be taken into our confidence and
given such information as to existing conditions in Western
Australia as would enable them to judge what the chances of
success might be and induce them to undertake the task of secur-
ing the necessary voluntary contributions. During the twelve
months that followed, a copy of the resolutions adopted, a copy
of Hogan's letter and a copy of the later letter from Wilson, had
of necessity to be printed and circulated among the eighty-six
branches of the organization then existing. These were read to
the members, with the result that fully 7,000 men were eventually
aware of the project on hand. That there was then no in-
former or spy in the organization is proved by the fact that the
British Government took absolutely no precaution against the
rescue, and the carrying out of it fell on them "like a bolt from
the blue".
The Convention entrusted the project to a Committee of ten,
of which I was chairman, but only five were active, namely:
James Reynolds of New Haven, Conn.; Patrick Mahon of Roches-
ter, N. Y., Treasurer; John C. Talbot of San Francisco; John
W. Goff of New York, and myself. In later stages, Dr. William
Carroll of Philadelphia was added. In the course of our work
we received invaluable co-operation from John Boyle O'Reilly,
from John Kenealy of Los Angeles, McCarthy Fennell and others.
The raising of the funds which eventually were ascertained
to be necessary, was a prolonged and arduous job. In February,
1875, at which date but a small percentage of the money needed
254
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
had been turned in, I on behalf of the Committee, and on an
introduction from John Boyle O'Reilly, had interviews with Cap-
tain Henry C. Hathaway in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Hath-
away had been third mate of the American whaling bark Gazelle
on which O'Reilly had escaped from Australia in 1869, and on his
recommendation we secured the co-operation of his son-in-law,
John T. Richardson, and Captain George S. Anthony, both of
New Bedford. Neither of these three men had, so far as we
knew, a drop of Irish blood in his veins, but they undertook
the work they were asked to perform as readily as if they had
been sworn Fenians, and right well did they perform it.
It was finally decided to purchase a sailing vessel, fit her out
as a whaler, send her on a cruise which should extend to Western
Australia, and there endeavor to get the prisoners aboard. Hath-
away pointed out that such a ship could pay her way, and even
make a profit under favorable whaling conditions.
Accordingly, the bark Catalpa, then lying at Boston, was pur-
chased by Richardson for $5,250. Richardson risked some of his
personal funds in the purchase, and advanced $4,000 to James
Reynolds — who was acting for the Clan-na-Gael — on a thirty-day
note. This note was duly redeemed from the money raised by the
Clan.
Though built originally as a whaler, the Catalpa had for some
years previously been engaged in the West India trade, and
several important changes were necessary. A blubber deck had
to be constructed, she had to be coppered, whaling boats had to
be built. Some sails, an anchor, a chronometer, as well as all
accessories for a whaling expedition such as oil, watercasks, har-
poons, bomb-lancers, medicine chest, etc., were also provided.
The outfitting was superintended by Hathaway and Richardson,
and as a result of their practical experience the job was done
expeditiously and cheaply. I may mention that the Catalpa was
at the outset examined for her seaworthiness, etc., by Lieutenant
Tobin, a United States Naval engineer. Years later he called on
me in New York, told me if he had known the purpose for which
we wanted the vessel, he could not have done what he did, but
that he was very glad he did not know and that the expedition
succeeded.
The announcement of the Catalpa's readiness to sail on April
27, 1875, brought up the problem of selecting the Clan-na-Gael
man to go aboard. It was decided that one man only should go,
and the final selection rested between Denis Duggan and Thomas
Brennan. Duggan was my choice, but Goff wanted Brennan.
At the last moment James Reynolds took the responsibility of in-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
255
stalling Duggan, but after the vessel sailed, it was agreed that
Brennan should join her at Fayal, Azore Islands. On Brennan's
arrival there, Captain Anthony refused to ship him. Personal
friends then financed him to go to Australia, and he eventually
got on the Catalpa together with the rescued men and their
rescuers. This matter of Brennan, and subsequent developments,
formed the basis for controversies later which I will not now
dwell on.
The selection by the Committee of the man to plan and effect
the actual getaway in Australia was the next step. I desired to
go and was assured of practically the unanimous support of the
Committee, but conditions arose with regard to the raising of the
funds for the whole expedition which made it necessary for me
to remain in America. Furthermore, my disappearance at that
time would probably result in loose talk, with the possibility of
ruining all chances of success.
John J. Breslin, the man who had liberated James Stephens
from Richmond Prison, had just come from Boston to New York.
He was familiar with the British prison service, was a man of
fine presence, good manners, high intelligence and very unusual
decision of character. He was ideal for the job, and, on my
proposal, was unanimously chosen for the chief command of the
rescue expedition. He proceeded via Los Angeles, where he con-
sulted with John Kenealy, and as requested by the California
men, Thomas Desmond accompanied him. There were long
delays due to embarrassing financial disappointments, but both
men sailed from San Francisco on September 13, and arrived at
Sydney on October 15, 1875; reached Melbourne on October 30,
then proceeded via Albany (King George's Sound) to Fremantle,
where they arrived on November 16.
Breslin, who had travelled under the name of James Collins,
made Fremantle his headquarters, and promptly got into com-
munication with the prisoners in whom he was interested. Before
leaving San Francisco, he had been furnished with a legal docu-
ment from which one might infer that James Collins possessed
large interests in lands and mines in Nevada and other States of
the Union. Breslin, in his report, remarks: "I believe my West
Australian reputation as a millionaire is chiefly due to the fact
that this document was 'with intent to deceive' left loosely in
my room so that it might be read."
During the week following Breslin's arrival at Fremantle, he
learned that William Foley, one of the Fenian ex-prisoners, was
at large in the district. Through the latter, news of Breslin's
presence was conveyed to James Wilson, as was the method of
communication to be employed between him and Breslin.
256
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
About the middle of December, Breslin actually visited the
Fremantle prison in company with two other gentlemen, and
they were shown all through it by the superintendent. Breslin
reported to us on his return to America that "he found it to be
very secure and well guarded". Meantime, Desmond found
employment at Perth, but kept in touch with Breslin. John King,
an old Fenian, whom he had met in Sydney and from whose
friend there Breslin received £200, had come to Bunbury, passed
for a gold miner under the name of Jones, and remained to par-
ticipate in the rescue.
The Catalpa was late in arriving, and to avoid arousing sus-
picion Breslin made a trip into the interior. When the vessel
finally reached Bunbury — the nearest port to Fremantle for mer-
chant ships — on March 28, 1876, Breslin went there to confer with
Captain Anthony. His plan was to get the prisoners from Fre-
mantle to a point on the coast 20 miles south, named Rocking-
ham; the Catalpa to stand well out to sea, and the rescue party
to proceed to her in a whale boat. At Breslin's suggestion Cap-
tain Anthony accompanied him from Bunbury to Fremantle on
the mail steamer Georgette so that he should see the coast out-
side of Rockingham and know exactly where his ship should
wait. On arrival at Fremantle they found there the British gun
boat Convict, which had anchored on the previous day. This was
disconcerting, and the additional fact that another gun boat was
expected soon at Fremantle, caused Breslin and Anthony to post-
pone the rescue. In order to justify the extended stay of the
Catalpa at Bunbury, it was decided that Anthony should over-
haul and paint her in that port.
Before Anthony left Fremantle a series of camouflaged tele-
grams was arranged between himself and Collins (Breslin), by
which Anthony was to be kept informed of the gun boat situa-
tion. Finally it was decided to make the getaway on Easter
Monday, April 17, 1876.
Regarding the method of communication with the Fenian pris-
oners it may be well to state that their good conduct and length
of imprisonment had entitled them to the rank of "constable",
which enabled them to communicate with each other with greater
ease and freedom than usually permitted. Breslin's last remark
to the prisoners was: "We have money, arms and clothes; let no
man's heart fail him, for this chance may never come again".
At 7:30 that Monday morning, Desmond drove a pair of horses
and trap out of Fremantle; Breslin, with a similar outfit, left in
another direction; but both later directed their course to the
JOHN J. BRESLIN
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL 257
rendezvous near the prison which had been pre-arranged with
the prisoners.
After breakfast, the political prisoners were engaged outside
the prison wall. Cranston passed out as if going on a message,
and, having overtaken the warder who was marching the work-
ing party to which Wilson and Harrington belonged, showed him
a key and told him he had been sent to take Wilson and Har-
rington to move some furniture in the Governor's house, which
was the nearest point to where they were to meet Breslin. The
warder told Wilson and Harrington to go with Cranston, and
they marched off. Darragh took Hassett in the same direction as
if going to work; they were joined by Hogan, who made an excuse
for temporary absence to the warder in charge of him.
The first three got into the trap with Desmond and drove
away. The others sat in with Breslin. In each trap they had
three hats and three coats which the prisoners donned promptly.
Brennan had left for Rockingham at 6 A. M. King, well mounted,
followed the traps.
The first ten miles of the route from Fremantle to Rocking-
ham were good for Western Australia, the next six miles heavy
and cut up, and the remaining four a mere track, brush and
sand. The journey was made in record time. I now quote from
Breslin's report:
"At half-past 10 A. M. we made the beach and got aboard
the whale boat. The men had been instructed to stow them-
selves in the smallest possible space, so as not to interfere
with those at the oars, and in a few minutes all was ready
and the word was given, 'Shove off, men; shove off.'
"Now fairly afloat the word was: 'Out oars and pull for
your lives! Pull as if you were pulling after a whale!' The
boat's crew was somewhat disconcerted and scared at the
sudden appearance of so many strangers armed with rifles and
revolvers, and pulled badly at first, but the voice of the steers-
man rallied them, and cries: 'Come down Mopsa; come down,
you big Louis, Pull, Toby, pull. Give them stroke, Mr. Silvee.
What do you say, men? Come down all together. Pull away,
my men, pull away,' soon warmed them to their work and
they fell into stroke and pulled well.
"When about two miles off shore we saw the mounted
police ride up to the spot where we had embarked, and then
slowly drive the horses and wagons we had used up the beach
towards the Rockingham jetty. * * *
"About half-past 5 P. M., Toby raised the Catalpa 15 miles
ahead of us, and the men bent to their oars in order to get
as near to her as possible before dark; at half-past six we
had gained on the ship and could see her topsails quite plain
from the crests of the waves. Made sail on the boat. At
this time the weather had become gloomy, with rain squalls,
and we were pretty thoroughly soaked.
"The boat made good headway under sail and we were
rapidly overhauling the ship, carrying all sail and the whole
258 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
boat's crew — sixteen men in all — perched on the weather gun-
wale, with the water rushing in on us from time to time,
when, about seven o'clock a squall struck us, carrying away
the mast, which broke short off at the thwart, and, by the
time we had the mast and sail stowed away, the ship had dis-
appeared in the increasing darkness."
Breslin's party did not again sight the Catalpa until 7 o'clock
next morning, April 18. Just at that time they saw the smoke
of the Georgette as she steamed out of Fremantle, with all sail
set. It soon became evident that she was making for the
Catalpa — and as to her purpose there could be no doubt. The
occupants of Breslin's whaleboat took down their sail, and the
Georgette fortunately passed without seeing them. The Georg-
ette ran alongside the Catalpa, and after about 10 minutes
steamed slowly away in the same direction, but to the amaze-
ment of Breslin's party the Catalpa also held on her course, and
both kept increasing their distance from the whaleboat. Some
three hours later, the Georgette headed back for Fremantle, and
fortunately for those in the boat, she kept in close to the coast,
evidently searching the indentations for the refugees.
The men of the whaleboat struggled on in the course the
Catalpa was sailing, although she was fast receding from their
view, and they began to call her "the phantom ship". They kept
on, however, and about 2 P. M. saw that the Catalpa had altered
her course and was coming toward the whaleboat. However, all
was not well yet. In a few minutes the occupants of the latter
saw a police cutter leaving shore, and it now became a question
as to which boat should reach the Catalpa first. Breslin's report
continues:
"At 3 P. M. we ran up to the Catalpa on the weather side,
the police boat being close up on the lee side, and scrambled
on board in double quick time. As soon as my feet struck the
deck over the quarter rail, Mr. Smith, the first mate, called
out to me: 'What shall I do now, Mr. Collins? What shall I
do?' I replied: 'Hoist the flag and stand out to sea.' And
never was a manoeuvre executed in a more prompt and sea-
manlike manner. The police boat was dropping alongside. As
we went past, I stepped to the rail and kissed my hand to the
gentlemen who had lost the race.
"Twenty-eight hours in an open boat, with a liberal allow-
ance of rain and seawater, cramped for want of room, and
cheered with the glorious uncertainty as to whether we should
gain freedom or the chain-gang, — a suit of dry clothes, a glass
of New England rum and a mug of hot coffee were just the
things to put 'where they would do the most good,' and were
put accordingly. * * *
"About six o'clock next morning, however, the Georgette
was lying about half of a mile to windward of us, with a
man-of-war and vice-admiral's flag flying. We set the 'Stars
and Stripes' as we passed, and held on our course. * * *
At a quarter to eight o'clock the Georgette was so near that
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
259
I could see she had guns, an artillery force, and the water
police on board.
"The men of our party were all assembled in the cabin
with their rifles and revolvers ready. Of the watch not one
was visible from the Georgette but the lookout and the man
at the wheel. I now stepped down into the cabin and told
our men that if the officials on board the Georgette were
determined to fight for their re-capture they would, most
probably, succeed, as they had the advantage of us in every
way — more men, better armed, cannon, and a steamer with
which they could sail round and round us. I also explained
to them that while those of our party who had not been in
prison could only suffer imprisonment, the men who had been
imprisoned could be hanged in case any life was lost by their
resistance. I added it was simply a matter of dying now or
waiting to die in prison, if the officials on the Georgette fired
into or boarded us. Their answer was 'We'll do whatever you
say.' I then said, 'I'll hold out to the last,' and went on deck
again.
"At 8 A. M. the Georgette steamed ahead and fired a shot
across our bows. • Captain Anthony then put a question to me,
to which I replied, 'Hold on, and don't take any notice of the
shot yet.'
"After a lapse of about three minutes, the artillery men
having reloaded their field piece, and the steamer and the
Catalpa sailing side by side within easy speaking distance, I
said, 'Now ask him what does he want?' Captain Anthony
stepped on the weather rail and raised his speaking trumpet;
as he did so the Georgette hailed: 'Bark ahoy!' and the an-
swer went back: 'What do you want?' 'Heave to,' came back
from the Georgette. 'What for?' shouted our captain. After
quite a pause the Georgette hailed: 'Have you any convict
prisoners on board?' Answer: 'No prisoners here; no pris-
oners that I know of.'
The Georgette then hailed — T telegraphed to your gov-
ernment; don't you know that you are amenable to British
law in this Colony? You have six convict prisoners on
board. I see some of them on deck now.'
"I remarked to the Captain: 'This fellow is lying and try-
ing to bluff us; he can't send a message to Adelaide before
Saturday next.' The Georgette next hailed: T give you
fifteen minutes to consider, and you must take the conse-
quences; I have the means to do it, and if you don't heave
to I'll blow the mast out of you.'
"Captain Anthony shouted a reply pointing to his flag.
'That's the American flag; I am on the high seas; my flag
protects me; if you fire on this ship you fire on the American
flag.'
"The threat of firing on the flag highly incensed our first
mate, who exclaimed, 'Damn him, let him sink us; we'll go
down with the ship; I'll never start sheet or tack for him.'
Smith now asked, 'What will you do if he attempts to board
us?' I replied, 'Sink his boat when it comes alongside. You
have a couple of good heavy grindstones; let us have them
handy to heave over the side.' The Captain reminded Smith
of some heavy logs of timber which were in the hold and
bade him order the crew to pass them on deck; these logs
were quickly passed up and laid on the main hatch ready for
use. * * *
260 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
"Our fifteen minutes' grace and several other minutes
had expired, and, as the Georgette steamed slowly across
our stern, I expected a raking shot among the masts. She
did not fire; and, as she ranked alongside again, I knew that
the game of bluff was played out. The spokesman of the
party on board the Georgette, whom I believed to be Colonel
Harvest, called out: 'Won't you surrender to our govern-
ment?' No reply. And again he called out — 'I see three of
those men on board now.' Our Captain replied — 'You are
mistaken, sir; the men you see are my ship's crew.'
"The Georgette hailed: 'Can I come on board?' To this
Captain Anthony replied: 'No, sir; I am bound for sea and
can't stop.'
"The Georgette still kept us company as if loath to part,
until half-past nine A. M., when she slowly swung off, and
without having the courtesy to bid us bon voyage, steamed
back to Fremantle."
The remaining incidents of the voyage were written in the
log of the good ship Catalpa. The rescued prisoners boarded her
on April 18, 1876, and after a lapse of nearly four months they
were landed safely at New York.
Later, a financial statement setting forth all monies raised for
the expedition, and all the expenditures incurred, was duly sub-
mitted to the proper authorities and approved. Incidents con-
nected with this fund and other matters relating to the Rescue
subsequently became subjects of controversy; they received a lot
of publication, so I need not repeat them here.
The plan for the rescue of those Irish prisoners in Western
Australia was launched and carried through under difficult cir-
cumstances. In concluding this necessarily abbreviated account
of it, it is sufficient to reiterate that ten years after their convic-
tion for having joined the Fenian organization, those six former
soldiers of the British army:
Martin J. Hogan
James Wilson
Thomas H. Hassett
Michael Harrington
Robert Cranston
Thomas Darragh
stepped ashore on American soil as free men. Thus by a combi-
nation of Irish skill and pluck and Yankee grit, the Catalpa expe-
dition was crowned with success.
CHAPTER XL.
THE FENIANS AND THE IRISH LANGUAGE.
Douglas Hyde Mistaken in Theory that John O'Leary Repre-
sented Views of Majority — John O'Mahony and Many Minor
Leaders Enthusiastic for Revival of Old Tongue — Would
Have Restored It Had They Won — An Irish Government
Only Can Complete Work of Restoration.
This chapter, it will be noted, in addition to treating of the
deep interest taken by the Fenians in the propagation of the
Irish language, also deals with the influence of the work of the
Gaelic League (which was not established until 1893) on the
Insurrection of 1916. It might, perhaps, more appropriately ap-
pear towards the end of this volume, but, as the subject matter
does not come under any particular grouping of chapters, I will
insert it here — in contact with the story of the Fenian period
of 1865-67.
Douglas Hyde's admirable article on the work of the Gaelic
League, which the Gaelic American reprinted on August 11, 1923,
from the Manchester Guardian Commercial, was a most timely
contribution to the history of present-day Ireland. It supplies
authentic information that could hardly be given by any other
man, except perhaps Eoin MacNeill. Coming from An Craoibhin
Aoibhin, it was doubly welcome. Many of us thought that Dr.
Hyde rather resented the large and important part played by
members of the Gaelic League in the Revolutionary Movement
which brought about present conditions, but his splendid article
showed that we were mistaken. Not only did he not resent it,
but he was evidently proud of it and said truly that the Gaelic
League was the mother of Sinn Fein.
Very much of the information he gave was wholly unknown
to the great mass of the Irish people. The historians of the
future, having the written evidence of one of the founders of
the Gaelic League and its President for the first 22 years of
its existence, must record and give proper emphasis to the tre-
mendous influence of that organization in leading up to the 1916
fight for Irish Independence.
There is one part of Douglas Hyde's article — that dealing with
the neglect of the Irish language by previous National Move-
261
262 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
ments— in which, owing to lack of information, Dr. Hyde did
not do justice to the Fenians. Here is what he says:
"The Young Irelanders of thirty years earlier, a national
and popular body, never gave any sign of any desire to do
anything for the language, with the exception of the chival-
rous Davis, and he did not know it.
"The Fenians who succeeded them in the 'sixties never
seemed to recognize in any official way that there was an
Irish language at all. The most literary and in many ways
the most striking of them, when he came back to live in
Ireland after his exile, made a speech in Cork, widely circu-
lated as a pamphlet, in which he advised his hearers not to
bother about Irish. T begin by a sort of negative advice,'
he said. 'You are most of you not destined to be scholars,
and so I should simply advise you — especially such of you
as do not already know Irish — to leave all this alone.' In
this attitude he was faithfully followed by all his adherents
until the language movement had become a power. I well
remember the night upon which Arthur Griffith first
acknowledged that he would give allegiance to it."
John O'Leary is evidently the returned exile referred to as
making the speech in Cork. O'Leary was highly respected by all
the Fenians, as he deserved to be, but he did not represent the
views of the majority, at least before the Rising of 1867, on the
question of the language. Douglas Hyde knew John O'Leary
very well in his later years — so well that O'Leary made him a
Fenian, as he did with William Butler Yeats, Rollestone, Gregg,
Charles Johnston, Oldham and other Trinity College students
when the Young Ireland society of which they were all mem-
bers, was doing splendid work in Dublin in the 'eighties. I got
this information from Charles Johnston (son of the famous
Johnston of Ballykilbeg) during Douglas Hyde's trip to America
for the Gaelic League. O'Leary had a hobby, like most college
men of his time, that "culture" consisted mainly in knowledge of
English literature, Latin and Greek, and he was not proficient in
speaking languages. Although he had a thorough knowledge
of French literature and had lived many years in Paris, he never
learned to pronounce the language correctly and always spoke
it, as he did English, with a strong Tipperary accent. The quo-
tation from the Cork lecture represents his views exactly, but
not those of any of the older Fenian leaders, nor of the great
mass of the membership.
John O'Mahony, the founder of the Fenian Movement and
its leader in America, was a fine Gaelic scholar, steeped to the
lips in the lore of ancient Ireland, and his translation from
the Irish of "Keating's History of Ireland", with its valuable
notes, culled from old manuscripts and traditions, is a monu-
ment to his scholarship. All who knew him were well aware that
he looked forward to the restoration of Gaelic as one of the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
263
certain results of the achievement of National Independence,
and he expressed this hope in many of his speeches. The latter
were never collected, but his translation of Keating is there to
testify to his feeling, and the selection of the word "Fenian"
as the name of the organization is indirect evidence of the same
kind. The Fianna Eireann was his ideal of a National Army.
Many of the minor leaders in Ireland, especially in Connacht
and Munster, and practically all the rank and file in the rural
districts of those provinces, were fluent Gaelic speakers and
strong for the restoration of the language. I can speak from
personal knowledge of this, for I knew very many of the men
and talked with them on the subject. O'Donovan Rossa not only
spoke Irish fluently, but he had an extensive book knowledge
of it. He was often a welcome visitor to the house of John
O'Donovan in Buckingham Street, Dublin, and the two men
had long talks on and in the old tongue. Many of the Fenian
Centres in Connacht and Munster and some in Leinster and
Ulster, were enthusiastic advocates of the restoration of the
language, but it is, of course, true that no organized effort was
made at that time to restore it, on account of incessant activi-
ties in the political field. Everything was subordinated to the
work of organization.
The same was true of American Fenianism and it is certain
that had the movement succeeded, the restoration of Irish would
have been undertaken by the Republican Government at the
very first opportunity. John O'Mahony would certainly have
exercised great influence in that Government.
The decline of the language was very rapid during the last
century. When my mother, who was born in 1812, just thirteen
miles from Dublin on the high road to Naas, was a girl, all the
middle aged and old people spoke Irish, but not as their every-
day language, and she herself knew many phrases and hundreds
of words. I was only one among many who wanted to learn
the language and to see it revived. When only nine years of age
I bought an Irish Primer. When fourteen, I invested in a lesson
book and dictionary. I knew many Dublin men who had ac-
quired a fair knowledge of Irish in the same way and through
talking to Connachtmen on their way to England to reap the
harvest, though the harvestmen were very reluctant to talk Irish,
except among themselves. The idea had already become wide-
spread that Irish was a badge of inferiority, and schoolboys in
many parts of Connacht had to carry, hung from the button-
holes of their jackets, small sticks on which their parents cut a
notch for every word of Irish spoken in their hearing at home,
and the schoolmaster gave them a slap for every notch.
264
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
I knew that Meath men who lived near enough to Dublin to
bring loads into Smithfield Market used to line up their carts
in front of Delahoyde's druggist establishment on Queen's Street
and make their purchases there, because Albert Delahoyde, one
of the sons, who was Treasurer of a Gaelic Class that I attended
from 1858 to 1861, spoke Irish very well. Later he joined the
little Papal Army, and still later was a lieutenant in the Aus-
trian Army. It is a curious fact that the name is the same as
Hyde, Delahoyde being the old Norman form.
That little Gaelic class was started by a few young men and
boys who thought they were initiating a movement to revive the
language, but many of them dropped away after a time because
they got too busy in Fenianism. In the end they were unable to
pay the rent of their quarters in Middle Abbey Street, where
Martin A. O'Brennan, who kept an Academy on Bolton Street,
was their teacher. He was the author of a convenient text book
called "Irish Made Easy." A. M. Sullivan gave us the use of his
editorial room in the Nation office. It was there I was sworn in
a Fenian. We continued to meet there until T. D. Sullivan came
in one evening with a set of resolutions which he got us, boys
as we were, to put our names to, calling a meeting at the Euro-
pean Hotel, Bolton Street, to start the "National Petition" move-
ment ("taking England at her word") which gave Fenianism its
first real start in Dublin. Neither Alexander M. nor Timothy D.
Sullivan, nor their brother Donal, who was Business Manager
of the Nation, knew a word of Irish, although they were brought
up in Bantry, then an Irish-speaking centre, yet they took great
interest in the language and gave the revival a good start by
publishing from week to week in the Nation Father Ulick Burke's
"Easy Lessons in Irish."
I give these details to show that the desire to revive the
language was then widespread and that it only needed a Douglas
Hyde, with his fine enthusiasm and great organizing capacity,
to start a Gaelic League more than thirty years earlier. And
Irish was still a living language, not only in Munster, Connacht
and several counties of Ulster, but also in parts of Louth, Meath,
Westmeath, Longford and Kilkenny, as well, so that the work
of restoration would have been then much easier. It was, how-
ever, next to impossible at that time to get native speakers from
Connacht and Kerry who helped us on pronunciation and by
singing Gaelic songs, to even learn the alphabet.
It is, of course, quite true that men very actively engaged in
a political movement, especially one of a revolutionary charac-
ter, are too absorbed in their work to give much time to any-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
265
thing else. The Fenians, owing to the American Civil War and
the bitterness of the American people against England, were
filled with the idea that military action alone, with assistance
from America, would free Ireland. They consequently devoted
all their attention to that line of work, but failed because
of poor leadership and inadequate resources. But they cer-
tainly would not have brought military success any nearer in
those few critical years by starting a movement to revive Gaelic,
though such a movement initiated then would have brought
results at a later period.
Important as has been the work of the Gaelic League and
of Sinn Fein, neither, nor both combined, would have brought
about the national reawakening without the military action of
Easter Week in 1916. It may be said that the Gaelic League
started Sinn Fein, but until the latter became Sinn Fein agus
An Lamh Laidir, it had no chance. Its policy was not adapted
to the character and temperament of the Irish people, who are
only thoroughly aroused by action.
The Gaelic League prepared the ground for and made pos-
sible the later movements, but it required physical action to bring
results. Some of the physical force men, it is true, spoke lightly
of the Language Movement in the early days of the Gaelic
League, but in those days many Gaelic Leaguers talked arrant,
flippant nonsense about physical force. They sneered at Fenian-
ism and scoffed at the literature of Young Ireland because it
was written in English. But that literature, written in the
language of the enemy, was the inspiration of the Fenians,
and, but for Fenianism, neither the Gaelic League nor Sinn Fein
would have been possible. All of these movements served Ire-
land in their own way and all had their defects. And it must
be remembered, after all, that it requires an Irish Government
to complete the task of restoring the Irish language. If the
men of 'Forty-Eight or the Fenians had been able to establish
such a Government, there would have been no necessity for the
Gaelic League.
PART VI.
CHAPTER XLI.
JOHN O'MAHONY.
Exercised a Far-Reaching Influence on the Fenian Movement,
But Lacked Some of the Essential Qualities of Leadership —
The "Invasions" of Canada.
John O'Mahony, the leader of the American Fenians — "Head
Centre" was the official title — was one of the most interesting
characters in Irish history. He was an Irish gentleman of the old
school, of splendid physique, well educated, and an accomplished
Gaelic scholar. Descended from the Chief of the O'Mahony
Clan and recognized as their Chief by the stalwart, fighting
peasantry of the mountainous region on the Cork-Tipperary
border, he was brought up without any association with "the
Garrison", among whom he lived as a "gentleman farmer", with
a very comfortable income. His standing among the people was
aptly illustrated in a poem by his Secretary, Michael Cavanagh:
"Hail to you; hail to you, Chief of the Comeraghs," and he him-
self, in a lecture in Cooper Institute, New York, some years before
his death, described this status by saying that the head of his
family "could always count on 2,000 men in his quarrel". That
illustrates the Ireland of the Clans. They fought for the Chief
whether he had the right or the wrong on his side — and recent
events have shown that there is very much of that spirit in
Ireland to-day.
O'Mahony was born at Clonkilla, a picturesque place on the
banks of the Funcheon, near Mitchelstown, County Cork, in
the year 1819.
In the early days of Fenianism, and even earlier, there were
many stories current in Ireland regarding the great physical
strength and prowess of O'Mahony and his immediate ances-
tors. The O'Mahony family were the popular champions against
"The Garrison", and had many encounters with the latter. An
article by Dr. Campion of Kilkenny, describing how O'Mahony's
grandfather had horsewhipped the Earl of Kingston, the most
powerful landlord in the neighborhood, for some insulting re-
marks, appeared in the Celt in 1857. John O'Mahony wrote a
letter later correcting some of the details, but confirming the
horsewhipping.
266
COLONEL JOHN O'MAHONY
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
267
The most widely spread of the stories was about O'Mahony's
encounter with a "wicked" bull when a young man. He had a
habit of vaulting over walls when strolling around and one day
he landed in a corner where he found a bull of vicious reputa-
tion facing him, with no chance of getting away. The bull low-
ered his head to charge, but O'Mahony jumped on the angry
beast's back, gripped him by the horns, belabored him with a
stout stick and held his place on the bull's back while the
animal charged wildly around the field until exhausted. Irish
boys are very much influenced by stories of physical prowess,
and this particular story gave many a boy the idea that
O'Mahony was a hero.
On the outbreak of the abortive Rising in Tipperary, in '48,
O'Mahony gathered about 2,000 men, all of fine physique, but
with no training or oganization and, with the exception of some
fowling pieces, no arms. There had been no Young Ireland
propaganda among them and there was probably no Confederate
Club in the whole mountain district. The men — all Gaelic
speakers — were simply following their Chief to fight the English.
That spirit was in the marrow of their bones and needed no
propaganda to make it flare up.
But the utter collapse of Smith O'Brien's attempt at Ballin-
garry and John Blake Dillon's decision not to fight at Killenaule,
rendered it absolutely useless for him to keep his men "out", so
O'Mahony disbanded them and remained in hiding until he
escaped to France. After a short stay in Paris, where he met
James Stephens who had also escaped, he made his way to
America.
When O'Mahony went "on his keeping", as they called it in
those days (1848), he turned his property over to his brother-in-
law, one of the Tipperary Mandevilles, and, as he had no profes-
sional training, he was dependent for a living on an occasional
small remittance from his sister and some pitiful remuneration
for literary work. His principal literary effort was a master-
piece— the translation from the Irish of Keating's History of
Ireland. Competent judges have said that his notes are almost
as valuable as the history itself, on account of his intimate
knowledge of old manuscripts and the traditions of the people.
I had the privilege of seeing the manuscript from which
O'Mahony made his translation. It belonged to a Corkman
named Sheehan who was practicing law in New York, and at a
dinner in his house in the mid-seventies he took great pride in
showing it to Joseph I. C. Clarke, James J. O'Kelly and me.
The transcript of Keating's work had been made by Sheehan's
268
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
grandfather, whom he described as "The Southern Captain Rock",
and was very carefully done on vellum. There was not a flaw or
an erasure in it.
During the Civil War O'Mahony organized a regiment of the
New York National Guard (the Ninety-ninth) composed entirely
of Fenians, and was appointed Colonel of it. That was how he
got his military title. But Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick J. Downing,
who had served in Meagher's Brigade, was the real commander
of the regiment, as O'Mahony was too busy to give much atten-
tion to it. It did not do any fighting in the war, but was called
out for duty to guard Confederate prisoners for many months
at Elmira. Many men who afterwards became prominent served
in the regiment. Charles Underwood O'Connell, who went to
Ireland in 1865 and spent five years in British prisons, was a
Captain; John F. Finerty was a sergeant, and Anthony MacOwen,
for some years Coroner in the Bronx, also served in it. Several
of the men went to Ireland in 1865 to take part in the projected
insurrection.
O'Mahony knew the Irish Question theoretically better than
any Irishman of his day, with the probable exception of Thomas
Clarke Luby; he knew the kind of organization that was neces-
sary to prepare the people for the struggle to win National Inde-
pendence and the propaganda that would educate the people,
but he lacked some of the essential qualities of leadership. He
was very much of a dreamer and not a good judge of men. While
he was very tolerant of differences of opinion and wished to
gather around him the best minds of the Race, those with whom
he surrounded himself were not all of the best quality. His
associates may be described thus: clever men like P. J. Meehan
of the Irish American (then the leading Irish paper in America,
though Patrick Donohue's Boston Pilot had the largest circula-
tion) who was not fully convinced of the possibility of an Inde-
pendent Irish Republic; William R. Roberts, a successful dry-
goods merchant, who was vain and shallow, but showy; the
Scanlan brothers of Chicago; Henry C. McCarthy, a State Sena-
tor in Illinois and an able man; P. W. Dunne of Peoria, big-
hearted and forceful, but impetuous; James Gibbons of Phila-
delphia; B. Doran Killian of New York, an able lawyer, and
others — all men of standing in the communities in which they
lived. But there was another class, who held no positions of
trust in the organization, and who hovered around the Chief like
flies over a sugar bowl, who flattered him, carried stories to him,
professed unlimited personal loyalty to him (which most of them
really felt) and exercised an influence over him that was not
always good.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
269
Most of these were honest fellows enough, though poor ad-
visers, but the worst of the lot was known as "Red Jim" Mc-
Dermott. Like Godfrey Massey (who turned informer as soon
as he was arrested in 1867) ; Reynolds, the informer of 1798;
Luttrell, at Limerick in 1691; and Corydon, who informed on
McCafferty at Chester, McDermott was the illegitimate son of a
married woman. His mother's husband was a coachman to an
Orange attorney named O'Brien, who lived on Stephens Green,
Dublin, and O'Brien was his real father. McDermott shame-
lessly boasted of this and blackmailed O'Brien during the greater
part of his life. He was a handsome fellow, glib-tongued and
ready-witted, but wholly without principle, moral sense or moral
scruples. He had served in the Irish Papal Brigade in 1860 and
returned to Ireland with the Cross of St. Sylvester on his breast,
which Dick Fitzpatrick, a British army veteran who was his
sergeant, told me he had done nothing whatever to deserve.
But that cross was his passport and credential in America.
Although Stephens had warned O'Mahony against him when he
left Dublin in 1863, O'Mahony made him an organizer within
a few weeks of his landing. He became O'Mahony's evil genius
and acquired a strange influence over him.
McDermott was really more responsible for the Split, which
took place at the end of 1865, than any of the bigger men. He
was constantly fomenting trouble by lying stories which he put
in circulation or told "confidentially" to numbers of people, with
the intention that they should be spread. Numerous complaints
and demands for his dismissal were made to O'Mahony, but he
stood by McDermott to the end — even after the Fenian Brother-
hood had practically ceased to exist.
When in 1872 John O'Leary, who had been in exile in Paris,
came to New York, there was a little conference held between
O'Mahony t and the recently released Fenian prisoners. At the
close, O'Leary (the only man present who dared to hurt his
feelings by such a question) said:
"Mr. O'Mahony, I want to ask you frankly, how is it that,
although practically every man of standing in the movement
distrusts this man McDermott, you insist on trusting him?"
O'Mahony, who was leaning his elbow on a tall mantelpiece
(unconsciously displaying his splendid figure) leaned over and,
solemnly shaking his head from side to side (a habit he had
when talking emphatically), said:
"Well, morally, I admit that McDermott is a bad man, but
politically (with great emphasis on the word) I have never been
able to see anything wrong with him."
270
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
"But, Mr. O'Mahony," replied O'Leary promptly, "Isn't it
enough that he is a blackguard?"
O'Mahony remained silent, but looked very uncomfortable.
This was the real secret of O'Mahony's failure as a leader
Beginning with profound distrust of McDermott, and irritation
at his influence over O'Mahony, the discontent among the other
Fenian leaders grew until it finally included Doran Killian, the
Secretary, who was a very able man, but self-assertive and with
a most unconcilitary manner, and finally the explosion came at
the New York Convention in 1865, when O'Mahony read a letter
from Stephens — which he published a day or two later — in which,
referring to the malcontents, Stephens used the expression:
"Lash them from you like so many dogs."
The Split had been brewing for several months and there
had been many public manifestations of it, but Stephens' ill-
judged letter evoked such anger among O'Mahony's opponents
that the breach was made irreparable. The C. O. I. R. (Chief
Organizer of the Irish Republic, as Stephens was called) was
angry and bitterly disappointed at the Split, coming just on the
eve of the time set for the Rising in Ireland — it is at such times
that Splits always come — and his feelings got the better of his
judgment. Stephens depended entirely on America for the funds
to arm the men in Ireland, neglecting the work of collecting at
home, and those funds were now to be expended in an invasion
of Canada. For quite some time the Roberts section of the
Fenian Brotherhood had been planning such a project. The
proposal had been opposed by O'Mahony from its inception,
but, later, convinced that the Roberts wing was determined to
carry it out, O'Mahony endeavored to forestall his opponents by
launching in advance an unfortunate expedition against Campo
Bello (an island off the Coast of Maine which was claimed and
held by the English) , and which failed. It was the idea of
B. Doran Killian that he could precipitate trouble between Eng-
land and the United States by seizing the land, but the Eng-
lish were "tipped off" (probably by "Red Jim") in time and sent
a small force which got there in advance of the Fenians who
were led by Bill Stephens (an Irish minister's son who had
been sworn in by Edmund O'Donovan while a student in Trinity
College, Dublin) , and by Tom Williams, who had been Editor
of the Longford Register. Thus, the money that remained
under O'Mahony's control, which was badly wanted in Ireland,
was spent to no purpose.
Immediately after the Campo Bello incident, the Roberts
party devoted all their energies to preparation for the Cana-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
271
dian raid which culminated in the fight at Ridgeway, under
General John O'Neill, on June 2, 1866. And, of course, the pro-
tests which the O'Mahony wing had been making against wast-
ing money on any such expedition were nullified by their own
foolish endeavor.
Another futile attempt to invade Canadian territory, which
was made in 1870, was on a larger scale, but was betrayed by
Beach, the half-breed Gypsy spy, who masqueraded under the
name of Le Caron and pretended to be a French sympathizer
with Ireland. His information enabled the Canadians to fore-
stall every move of the Fenians. That disastrous expedition
broke up the "Canadian" wing of the Fenians. The O'Mahony
wing lingered on for several years, but was unable to accomplish
anything, and finally broke up when O'Mahony died. Its last
effort was to send O'Mahony's remains to Ireland, but the com-
mittee which managed it in New York was composed of men of
the Clan-na-Gael. Fully 20,000 men — in a city where he had
died in poverty — marched behind the hearse en route to the
steamer on which the body of the dead leader was conveyed
to Ireland.
O'Mahony was given a great funeral, like Terence Bellew
McManus in 1861, and later James Stephens, Charles Stewart
Parnell and O'Donovan Rossa, but in New York he was prac-
tically starving for several months before his death. He was too
proud to tell his dire needs and only a few faithful followers,
who were all of humble means, knew his actual condition and
helped him to the utmost of their ability. He lived in a single
room in a tenement house, and when Dr. Denis Dowling Mulcahy
(one of the Fenian leaders released from a British prison a few
years previously) called to see him, he found him in bed in a
cold room, with a grate, but no coal to make a fire. Mulcahy
speedily remedied that defect and brought in medicine, but it
was too late to save his life. Yet the English press and many
of his own countrymen were telling at that very time how he
was rolling in wealth from the "robbery of the poor Irish servant
girls". But the fine funeral was supposed to compensate for all
this. No matter how the Irish treat a leader when living — and
the treatment is often very bad — they never fail to give him
decent burial.
CHAPTER XLII.
JAMES STEPHENS, C. O. I. R.
A Very Able Organizer, with Much Influence Over Young Men,
but Not a Great Man — Very Jealous of His Authority.
James Stephens, the C. O. I. R. (Chief Organizer of the Irish
Republic) , head of the movement in Ireland, was a very clever
man, but not in any sense a great one. He was not the founder
of the movement, but he organized it and made it what it was.
He had fine organizing ability and much influence over young
men, but he lacked some qualities of leadership and when con-
fronted by unforeseen difficulties, due to the Split in America,
he was unable to cope with them and failed.
Stephens was born in the City of Kilkenny in 1824, and was
a Civil Engineer by profession. He was only 24 when the failure
of William Smith O'Brien's attempted insurrection in 1848 cut
short his professional career. He escaped to France, where he
remained about nine years.
In Chapter II, I described the circumstances of Stephens'
return to Ireland in 1857, and the feelings of despair which
prevailed among the Republicans whom Denieffe had assembled
at a meeting in Dublin. Also, how Stephens by his optimism
not alone held them together, but injected new life and prog-
ressiveness into the Movement.
On St. Patrick's Day, 1858, Stephens established the Irish
Republican Brotherhood and soon merged into it the small revo-
lutionary groups that were then in existence. The vesting of
all authority in Stephens himself, which he insisted on, was the
chief strength of the organization in its early stages, because
it secured unity of direction. But, as we have seen, it proved to
be its undoing when the real crisis came.
Stephens wrote the Oath, and beyond that there was no
Constitution or law under which the organization was to be
governed. It was as follows:
"I (name) do solemnly swear allegiance to the Irish Re-
public, now virtually established; that I will take up arms at
a moment's notice to defend its integrity and independence;
that I will yield implicit obedience to the commands of my
superior officers, and finally I take this oath in the spirit
of a true soldier of liberty. So help me God."
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273
There were several slight variations, different men depending
on their memory, as the keeping of documents was forbidden,
but that is the version that I got and on which I swore in sev-
eral hundred men, and I believe it is absolutely correct. It was
simplicity itself, and ensured blind and unquestioning obedience
to Stephens' authority.
As the Movement began to make progress he remained
mostly in Dublin, living in lodgings consisting of a sitting room
and bedroom. Only a few men knew where to find him and they
visited him frequently. The talks were always informal, Stephens
throwing in a sentence or two occasionally. He always treated
each guest to a bottle of porter, bringing it in himself and serv-
ing it to the visitor.
It was at one of these gatherings that I met him first in
March, 1861, when I was about to start for France to enlist. He
tried to dissuade me from going and advised me to go to America
instead, offering to give me letters of introduction to John
O'Mahony, Colonel Corcoran and Thomas Francis Meagher, but
I had set my heart on becoming a Zouave (which no foreigner
could do at that time) , and like most other people, even in
America, I believed that the Civil War would only last a few
weeks or months. All young Irishmen at that time believed
the French army to be the ideal one, and I wanted to get my
training in it for the fight in Ireland. He failed to convince
me and I was told after I had left that he said: "That young
fellow is very stubborn." I was only a little over eighteen, and
he probably never met anyone of that age who failed to be per-
suaded by him.
When he found I was bent on going to France and had al-
ready secured a letter of introduction from T. D. Sullivan to J. P.
Leonard, who was correspondent of the Nation in Paris, and an-
other to John Mitchel (then in Paris) from Denis Holland, editor
of the Irishman, he gave up trying to change me and gave me
advice about Paris that would be useful to me. John Mitchel's
address on Holland's letter was in the Rue de l'Est, and I wanted
to call on him first, so Stephens wrote for me on a slip of paper
what I should say in asking my way. It was:
"Ayez la bonte m'indiquer la Rue de l'Est" (Have the goodness
to show me the way to the Rue de l'Est).
But I found from experience that Frenchmen were not quite
so formal in asking their way.
When I returned to Dublin a little over a year later, I was
brought to see Stephens again and he tested me in French and
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complimented me on my rapid acquisition of a working knowl-
edge of the language. That was his way with young men and
it was one of his methods of acquiring influence over them.
Most of the young men who met him thought he was phenome-
nally able and he cultivated that belief by telling them stories
about his accomplishments. Luby tells how he claimed to be
the best fiddler among thirty-two. According to himself he
was a great rifle shot, so if Dillon had not restrained him at Kil-
lenaule he would have killed the Captain of the Eighth Hussars
at the barricade. As Mitchel put it: "one moment, and Ireland
was in insurrection".
As the organization grew in Dublin, Stephens stopped re-
ceiving visitors at his own rooms, and instead paid for the lodg-
ings of a few trusted men, and he held his receptions in their
rooms. The chief of these was James Flood, whose brother Pat
was one of the most active recruiters among the Dublin cork
cutters. I was informed by a person who knew Pat, that he
was still alive in 1916, and when the fight began, although over
80 years of age, he got up out of a sick bed and started for the
Post Office. He broke down and was found lying helpless on
the steps of a house near the Rotunda and taken home. "Well,
thanks be to God, I lived to hear the shots fired for Ireland,"
the old man said.
At those informal gatherings previously mentioned, "The Cap-
tain" always talked glowingly of conditions in the country, but
seldom went into details. His air of supreme confidence greatly
impressed the men and they always went away satisfied. He led
all to believe that the organization was very strong and rich in
resources, and the general result of his talk was to create the
belief that all the necessary arms would come from America.
This discouraged the purchase of rifles, which could be made
easily in England in the early 'sixties, as the Government put
no restrictions whatever on their sale, believing that another
Insurrection in Ireland was wholly out of the question. The
men devoted all their energy to swearing in members and in
many places to drilling them, mostly by ex-soldiers of the Brit-
ish army.
Stephens about 1863 married Miss Jane Hopper, with whose
family he lived at that time. Her brothers, George, Charles and
John, were all members of the organization, but were not very
active and held no position in it. George kept a tailoring estab-
lishment in Dame Street, near the Parliament Street end of it,
and Charles a cigar shop in Henry Street, and their shops were
a sort of rendezvous for the members. Charles was the best of
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
275
the three and married Julia O'Kelly, sister of James J. O'Kelly.
George was rather pompous in manner, and John, the youngest,
was of little account.
Stephens' place of living was supposed to be a secret, but
on a visit to Dublin, O'Kelly learned it from Charles Hopper and
proposed to me (we were boyhood friends) to make a call on "The
Captain". As I could see him any time I wanted, and know-
ing from previous talks with Stephens that O'Kelly was persona
non grata with him, I did not like to go, but O'Kelly wanted to
have a "showdown" on his position in London, so I went with
him and introduced him to Stephens. He received O'Kelly coolly,
but was cordial with me. The first question he asked of O'Kelly
was: "How did you know where to find me?" O'Kelly replied
evasively: "I suppose it was intuitively." Stephens did not treat
him rudely, but his cold manner left no doubt of his dislike.
On my next visit to Dublin I saw Stephens at one of the regu-
lar meeting places, and he was very sarcastic about O'Kelly,
saying he was "no good". I defended O'Kelly and pointed out
his good work in London. Stephens did not deny it, but said:
"Like him as a friend as much as you please, but don't believe
in him as an Irishman. Notice his Cockney accent. That shows
weakness. I spent ten years in Paris, but my Kilkenny accent is
as good as ever. Give him up." I did not give him up, but
appealed to other men for help, and O'Kelly was eventually
recognized.
After the fight had been finally postponed on the night of
Feb. 21, '66, Stephens remained in Mrs. Butler's house in Kil-
dare St., up to the middle of March when he and Colonel
Kelly started for the United States. They got into a rowboat
off the coal quay and were taken down the river to a small
sailing vessel which conveyed them to Scotland, where they
landed in safety and went by train to one of the Southern
English ports, undiscovered, and crossed over to France, whence
they started for New York. Captain Nicholas Weldon, on whose
vessel they were taken away from Dublin, later wrote a very
interesting account of the trip, but it is too long for insertion
here.
Before leaving Dublin, Stephens appointed Edward Duffy, who
was out on bail, his deputy in Ireland. But he did not write a
single letter or send any money to Duffy during the whole
period of his absence in America, although he boasted at a
Fenian picnic in Jones' Wood, New York, in May, 1866, that he
was in communication with every county in Ireland and that
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
the Home Organization was in perfect condition. It was in that
speech that Stephens said:
"The Irish flag — the flag of the Irish Republic — will float
in an Irish breeze before New Year's Day, 1867."
His trip to America was a complete failure. He made speeches
in several cities, in which he indulged in the same kind of boast-
ing, showing that he had lost his head; he attended conferences
to bring about reunion of the factions, but nothing resulted
therefrom, although P. W. Dunne, one of the best of the Senate
Party leaders, did his utmost to get the leaders of both wings
to resign and to elect Stephens as leader of a reunited organi-
zation. He was willing to forgive Stephens for his letter to
O'Mahony the previous year, but the objectionable expression
used by Stephens left in others wounds which were too deep for
healing.
Things drifted along aimlessly in America and many heated
meetings were held until towards the close of 1866, when a con-
ference of the refugees of the I. R. B. and many of the American
officers who had been in Ireland was held in New York and pre-
sided over by Stephens, at which the decision was taken that
the fight should be made early in 1867. Those present had no
authority to make the decision, but they not only made it, but
compelled Stephens to order the Rising. At the next meeting
he was deposed as leader, and Colonel Kelly was elected in
his place.
The "men of action" obtained control of the organization,
the remnant of the funds, and of some thousands of rifles which
were afterwards sent to Ireland on the Erin's Hope, and arrived
too late to be of any use in the Rising. General Cluseret, who
had been a Captain of the French army and had risen to the
rank of General in the Union Army; General Vifcain, a Bel-
gian; and General Farioli, a Belgian of Italian parentage, ac-
companied the Irish-American officers on that expedition.
Cluseret later wrote in Frazer's Magazine a satirical and
somewhat cynical account of his experiences, in which he dwelt
on the utter lack of preparation, the motive of the men being
chiefly to "keep their word", and expressed a very unfavor-
able opinion of Stephens.
Stephens sailed for France, and after living in that coun-
try for many years he was expelled by Premier Ferry. His expul-
sion was a disgraceful proceeding that will forever leave a blot
on Jules Ferry's name. There was no justification whatever
for it, and it came about in this way: There was a man named
Eugene Davis in Paris who occasionally wrote poetry in the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
277
Irish papers. He was a "spoiled priest" and was never a member
of the Fenian organization, but posed with the English corre-
spondents as an authority on it. During the dynamite opera-
tions in the early 'eighties in London he constantly supplied
them with fakes. The correspondent of the London Standard
was a very gullible man and gave Davis £5 for reports of meet-
ings that never took place. Davis wrote a fake about a meeting
of dynamiters on an island in the Seine, at which he said that
Stephens presided, the Standard published it, and the English
Government at once demanded that the French Government
expel Stephens from France. Jules Ferry complied with the de-
mand without having a particle of evidence that any such
meeting had been held, and the old man was escorted by police
to the Swiss frontier while the blackguard who wrote the fake
was allowed to remain in Paris to ply his miserable trade. It was
a cruel blow to the poor old man, who had no sympathy with the
dynamite performances and had then no connection with any
kind of Irish movement.
Davis played a similar trick in the case of William Mackey
Lomasney after he had been blown to atoms in an explosion at
London Bridge. He wrote an "interview" with "The Little Cap-
tain", got £5 for it from the Standard correspondent and the
paper published it. It was cabled to the New York Herald and
published in full. Lomasney's wife, a devoted Irishwoman, was
completely deceived by it, with very bad effects on her mind.
She kept a little stationery store in Detroit and lived in a small
room behind it and was getting a small pension from the Clan-
na-Gael. I called on her one day, and she told me she was
quite sure that William was alive and in prison. Feeling tired
one day she lay down on the bed and while half asleep imagined
she saw his figure standing inside the door, — he had no beard,
and that showed that he must be in prison, as he always wore
one. I told her the facts about his death and that of his brother
and a man named Fleming who lost their lives with him. She
told me I was mistaken, went to the drawer of a little table,
took out a clipping from the Herald and showed it to me as
proof that he was still alive. I told her all about Davis, but I
wasted my breath. She knew nothing about newspapers or how
easily the best of them are deceived by fakers and continued to
believe up to her death that her husband was still living. The
Irish movement has been always cursed by fellows like Davis
hanging on the skirts of it who humbug the newspapers with
stories that have no foundation at all, — to make a little money.
In the early 'eighties, I think it was, a Bordeaux wine house
appointed Stephens its agent in New York, in the belief that
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
his popularity would bring trade, but the attempt proved a com-
plete failure. He got plenty of newspaper notice and the office
he opened was for a time crowded with visitors, but they were
not the class of man who drink wine and they could give him
no help to make sales. They were mostly old Fenians who still
believed in him and they used the opportunity to make an at-
tempt to restore him to the leadership. But that failed more
miserably than the wine agency. Stephens' day was gone and
after a few months he returned to Europe.
Stephens remained In Switzerland for some years, and then
the English Government permitted him to return to Ireland. In
his later days he wrote a series of articles for the Freeman,
giving his Recollections of the movement, but there was little
of any value in them. He was an admirable writer of short
letters, but a very poor hand at long articles; he spread out too
much and attempted style at which he did not succeed. The
Dublin Freeman's Journal paid him for these contributions, and
that helped him to keep himself comfortable for a while.
Finally, that paper collected a fund for him, which kept the
wolf from the door until he died in Blackrock, County Dublin,
April 29, 1901.
Stephens was not a good speaker, and that is a bad handicap
to an Irish leader. He had a fairly good voice and in the earlier
days of the movement occasionally indulged in singing. He
could sing "The Marseillaise" pretty well, but his favorite song
was James Clarence Mangan's translation of Koerner's "Hymn
of Freedom":
"Yes, Freedom's war, though the deadly strife
Makes earth one charnel boneyard,
Though the last fond kiss to the child and wife
And the last firm grasp of the poinard.
We all have had too much of love,
Let us now try a spell of hatred."
I often heard a group of Dublin men chanting the chorus.
O'Donovan Rossa, who did not sing, translated it into Irish, and
gave me a copy of it in Chatham Prison, but I could not keep it.
As a successful organizer, Stephens holds a prominent place
among those who in numerous generations endeavored to direct
Ireland's efforts towards the achievement of national Indepen-
dence. While his unfortunate decision against starting the fight
in 1865 or early in 1866 prevented that final act which might
then have brought to fruition his splendid work of the pre-
vious eight years, the blame for that must in large measure be
attributed to the Split among the Fenian Brotherhood in Amer-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
279
ica, and the failure of that organization to supply the arms on
which Stephens so confidently relied.
At all events, the extent to which he propagated the princi-
ples of Fenianism made an indelible impress on the national
consciousness of Ireland. During the third of a century after
1867, he lived to see other policies gradually advance to the
political forefront in Ireland; he died 15 years before the
national resurrection. In his declining years his existence was
practically forgotten; yet, on his death, his fellow countrymen
paid a striking tribute to his memory. It was not so impos-
ing as those which marked the interment of Terence Bellew
McManus in 1861 or of John O'Mahony in 1877. Yet it provided
another reminder to the new generation of those ideals for which
the Fenians stood; for which many of them laid down their
lives or lingered long years in British dungeons and penal colo-
nies, and for which Allen, Larkin and O'Brien died on an English
scaffold.
The last honor paid to Stephens was to place his remains
side by side with those of some of his notable Fenian comrades
of the '67 period, in the Patriots' Plot, Glasnevin.
CHAPTER XLIII.
JOHN O'LEARY.
Literary Man and Critic, Rather Than an Active Worker — His
Work Mainly as Editor of the "Irish People" — Later became
Head of the Reorganized I. R. B.
John O'Leary, one of the three most prominent men in the
Fenian Movement in Ireland after James Stephens, was not an
active worker in it and did not take the oath of membership.
He was released from the obligation by James Stephens, who
trusted in his honor. The men of the reorganized movement fol-
lowed the example of Stephens — even to the extent of electing
O'Leary Chairman of the Supreme Council. In both cases it was
a tribute to his high character and many men outside the Organ-
ization who did not believe in its policy shared that estimate
of him.
Born in the town of Tipperary in 1830, his father was a suc-
cessful merchant who was able to give his children a good
education and make ample provision for their future. He left
each of them a small income which placed them beyond the
necessity of working for a living. John's income when I met him
in 1879 was £150 a year; his sister Ellen's £80, Edmund's and a
younger sister's £50, and the others in similar proportions. The
income was derived from house property in the town of Tip-
perary, and that had some influence on his attitude towards
landlordism in the days of the Land League. When the organi-
zation needed money the family lent it £1,000 and never got it
back.
He was first sent to Carlow College and from there to Trinity,
where his graduation was prevented by his participation in the
Young Ireland Movement, and after its failure he finished his
education in the Queen's College in Galway.
I am not writing the Life of John O'Leary, but only the record
of his connection with Fenianism and my personal experiences
with him, and I must refer my readers to his own book, "Recol-
lections of Fenians and Fenianism", for the particulars of his
career.
He was living in London when Stephens decided to start the
Irish People and selected him as Editor. He came over to Dublin
and lived there until the paper was suppressed on September 15,
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
281
1865, and he was arrested and later tried and sentenced to twenty
years' penal servitude. Lord John Russell, the author of the
Treason-Felony Act, intended it to degrade John Mitchel and
class all England's enemies in Ireland as ordinary criminals.
That was the meaning of the second half of the term. Charles
Underwood O'Connell, when brought before Governor Clifton of
Portland Prison on some trivial charge, referred to himself as a
political prisoner, and the Governor replied: "England has no
political prisoners. You are a Treason-Felony convict." That
was the spirit of the England of that day and it was illustrated
by my first sight of John O'Leary in Portland Prison. I knew
Thomas Clarke Luby very well, but had never met O'Leary,
although I had seen him often going in and out of the Irish
People office — always with a book in his hand. When I got to
Portland about January, 1868, I was assigned to a cell on the
second tier of the small building occupied by the Penal Class
prisoners. As my door was opened early the following morning
to empty my slops into a big bucket carried by two convicts I
saw two other convicts on the ground floor on the other side of
the building carrying a similar bucket, or tub, with a short pole
inserted in the two handles. I had never seen O'Leary without
his fine dark beard, but I recognized him and Luby at once as
the carriers of the slop receptacle. They were moving from cell
to cell, with a weary, but resigned look on their faces as some
of the worst criminals in England emptied their cell pots into
the bucket. That was England's way of treating refined and
highly educated Irish gentlemen who opposed her rule in Ireland.
I was introduced to O'Leary by Luby on the following Sunday
at exercise when the prisoners walked in pairs and were allowed
to choose their own companions and change them at will. I was
able to give them an account of all that had happened in the
five months between their arrest and my own, and much that I
had heard from other prisoners in Mountjoy who had come in
later, and to exchange views on events and individuals.
But my intimate acquaintance with O'Leary began in 1879
in Paris, where he lived during his exile. I made Paris my head-
quarters and kept my trunks and papers there while making
trips to Ireland and England. During my time in Paris I dined
with him every day and passed several hours in his company,
sometimes with J. P. Leonard, who was then a teacher of English
at the Sorbonne, and sometimes with others, but usually we
were by ourselves. We discussed the incidents and the men
of the Movement fully and freely and I became very familiar
with his views on everything. We differed strongly in regard to
the Land Movement, but never quarrelled over it.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
In many ways O'Leary was the most interesting man I had
ever met. He had a thorough knowledge of French literature as
well as English, and spoke the language with great ease, but
could never pronounce the French "u" correctly and never tried.
He lived in a large room in the Latin quarter in which there
was space for little but books. There were books everywhere.
Shelves covered a whole side of the room and they were all filled
with books piled without any idea of regularity or classification.
There were a lot of books on the floor under the shelves, a couple
of tables were covered with them; they were piled on chairs, and
there was no attempt at order anywhere. But O'Leary always
knew where to find the book he wanted. They were all English
and French and there were a lot of old magazines. It was the
room of a bookworm who did little else than read.
His reading of newspapers was done mostly in the restaurants
or cafes where he ate, and there he got them free. He never
lived in a pension where meals were supplied, but always ate in
a cheap restaurant. He lived very frugally. There was then in
Paris a chain of Duval restaurants where one could get a good
dinner of soup, one course of meat with vegetables and a pint
of claret for 35 or 40 sous, and he ate his dinner mostly in them,
but took breakfast in a cheaper one. His coffee he always took
in a cafe where it was better and smoked his pipe and read his
papers there.
He had no social life in Paris, though he knew a lot of men,
both French and foreign, but he only met them in cafes. I
never heard of him visiting a French family, and he only knew
the French people through his reading and his occasional meet-
ings with prominent men. He was a poor judge of French
politics and his leanings were towards the Orleanists, not through
sympathy with that branch of the Bourbons, but because he
thought their politicians were more liberal. He was opposed to
all kinds of extremists and was not either a Republican or an
anti-Republican. He thought there was so little difference be-
tween a moderate Republic and a liberal limited Monarchy that
it would not be worth while to change from one to the other.
He was for a Republic in Ireland because it was the aim of the
Fenian Movement and there was no King in sight. But he would
have accepted Repeal of the Union if he could be sure that
England would keep her hands off. He had no positive political
opinions at all, except that he wanted Ireland to be free.
He and I visited the Chamber of Deputies at Versailles one
day when there was an important debate going on and we heard
several speeches of leading men. Marcere was then Minister of
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
283
the Interior and it was his department that was under fire. I
told him when coming out that the debate foreshadowed the fall
of the existing Government, and it fell in a few days, but O'Leary
thought the debate was unimportant. Having been for some time
in charge of the foreign desk on the New York Herald where I
read the leading Paris papers, I was familiar with the political
situation in France, but O'Leary was more concerned with French
literature than French politics.
He had a hobby that no man was fit for leadership unless he
had received a college education and he thought me prejudiced
when I told him that some of the greatest men in history, espe-
cially in ancient and mediaeval times, were wholly illiterate.
But, of course, I admitted the advantages of a college training.
He put me through a sort of cross-examination as to my training
and reading, and when I told him I had read Sallust in English,
Schlegel's "Philosophy of History", Hallam's "Middle Ages",
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Edmund
Burke's speeches, Lecky's "Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland"
and his "History of England in the Eighteenth Century", all the
English poets, and Robert Burns, Voltaire's "Age de Louis Qua-
torze", Madame de Stael's "L'Allemagne", Moliere's Comedies,
Racine, Boileau, some of Balzac's stories, practically all those of
Alexandre Dumas, and a lot of French novels, Rancke's "Lives
of the Popes", all of Sir Walter Scott's works, including his "Life
of Napoleon", most of Dickens, all the Irish novels, and a long
list of other books, he looked satisfied and said: "You have
culture."
John O'Leary was unalterably opposed to Parliamentary agi-
tation and to Nationalists entering the British Parliament, but
was very tolerant of men who held a different opinion, provided
they were not Fenians. In 1877, when Dr. Carroll of Philadel-
phia (who was then Chairman of the Executive of the Clan-na-
Gael) went over as an Envoy to the Home Organization, he ar-
ranged a conference with Parnell in a London hotel. James
J. O'Kelly was with Parnell, and he and O'Leary had a sharp
difference of opinion over John O'Connor Power, of whom O'Kelly
was an old friend. The difference prevented a formal agreement
with Parnell, who was quite willing to come to an understanding
with Dr. Carroll. O'Leary's voice was loud and resonant and in
the heat of argument it became louder. The person in the
next room scraped his feet loudly on the floor as a warning that
the discussion was overheard, and Dr. Carroll was informed later
that the occupant of the room was Mr. Gibson who afterwards
became Lord Ashbourne. It was a friendly act. Gibson at the
time was a British official in Ireland.
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Early in 1879, Michael Davitt arranged an interview in
Boulogne between Parnell and me, and in order to have a witness
against probable misrepresentation I informed Davitt that I
would ask Mr. O'Leary to come with me. He told Parnell of this
and the latter brought Joe Biggar with him. We met them at the
boat from Folkestone and our first talk was in a little park ad-
joining the quay. Almost the first words uttered by Parnell were:
"The last time I met O'Leary he 'started a hare' in the
person of John O'Connor Power, and we were kept so busy chasing
that hare that we had no time for anything else. Now I hope
Mr. O'Leary won't start a hare this time."
He spoke in a half jocular tone and O'Leary smiled, but said
nothing. But he did not start a hare. He was discussing abstract
questions (mainly about religion) with Biggar, who had answered
my statement that I was sorry he had turned Catholic, and I
availed myself of the opportunity to give Parnell some informa-
tion. Biggar asked sharply, "Why?" and I replied that he could
be more useful as a Presbyterian. "Now," I said, "when young
Protestants in Ulster showed a tendency towards Nationality their
mothers would say to them: 'The next thing we'll know is that
you've turned Papish like Joe Biggar.' "
"And what about my soul?" asked Biggar.
"Oh, I'd be willing to see you damned for the sake of Ireland,"
I said jocularly.
Biggar laughed and then he and O'Leary began a discussion
of the Presbyterian doctrine of Predestination.
O'Leary had a personal liking for Parnell, and the interview
paved the way for the full working agreement I made with
Parnell in Morrison's Hotel, Dublin, on the Sunday before he
went to Westport and told the Mayo farmers to "keep a firm grip
of their holdings".
O'Leary and I returned to Paris by way of Arras. He wanted
to see the Public Square there— La Place— because of the old
stone buildings on it— some of them erected as early as the
Thirteenth Century— and I myself wished to see the town which
Owen Roe O'Neill had defended for the Spaniards in the historic
siege against Henry IV. Owen Roe was honored by the gallant
French for his great defense by being allowed to march his
men out with arms in their hands and colors flying, between two
lines of French soldiers presenting arms. Some of the officers
under O'Neill afterwards fought at Benburb. Arras was then
part of Flanders and under Spanish rule.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
285
I also wished to see the battlefield of Bapaume, where my old
commander, General Faidherrbe, defeated the Germans in 1871,
thus saving Havre, through which the French received their
American supplies. When I was in the Foreign Legion in 1861,
Faidherrbe was a Colonel of Engineers and in command of the
sub-division of Sidi-bal-Abbes. The son of a widow who kept a
little debit de tabac in Lille, he was known to be a Republican
and was kept by the Empire in Algeria and Senegal where he
did some splendid engineering work. His signature was one of
those on my discharge.
We were in time for a very good table d'hote, which cost only
two francs, at a hotel near the railroad station, and then started
out to see the mediaeval buildings on the Public Square, in which
families were still living. O'Leary wore a billycock hat turned
up at the sides, had a knapsack on his back, which he always
carried during his walking expeditions, and carried a local guide
book in his hand. He read for me the descriptions of the old
houses and examined them critically. As we talked in English
we soon attracted a crowd of boys. The English tourist, with
his "strike me blind" tweed suit, is always a subject of fun for
French boys, and the group of street gamins, growing larger as
we slowly made our way, cried out in chorus: "Ainglishman; oh,
yes; God damn, Ainglishman; oh, yes; God damn." As the
volume of juvenile voices increased, I got tired of it and slipped
back to the middle of the Square, but O'Leary paid no more
attention to it than if so many flies were buzzing around him
and placidly finished his examination.
We walked to Bapaume and I got a peasant (who happened
to be an old soldier who took part in the battle) to show us the
battlefield and then went to Beauvais, where there is a Cathedral
that O'Leary wanted to see. He never missed a chance to see a
Cathedral, but the one in Beauvais cannot compare with that
of Amiens or the two in Rouen.
I have said that O'Leary did not know the French people,
but he had learned on his walking trips that in any farmer's
house one could get a cup of good coffee very cheap, so we went
to the door of one and asked could we get a cup. "Certainly,"
said a tall old man, and he showed us to a seat at a table in
the front room and in a few minutes brought us two bowls of
cafe au lait, with a long roll of bread. We did not need the bread,
but enjoyed the splendid coffee while O'Leary smoked his pipe
and rested from the walk and I smoked a cigar. The cost of the
coffee was only ten sous.
One of the stories O'Leary told me in Paris was illustrative of
old times in Tipperary. A friend came to see his father and they
286
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
were having a glass of punch together. The friend, noticing that
John was getting none, asked: "Why don't you give the boy a
drink?" "Oh, he's too young," said his father, and the friend
replied: "You'll rue the day that you didn't make that boy's
head while he was young."
After my return to New York, O'Leary and I corresponded
regularly. Shortly after Parnell's return to Ireland in 1880
O'Leary came to America as an Envoy, and we gave him an
opportunity of seeing the men for himself. He had an idea that
it was only the leaders who endorsed the Land League and that
it would be an easy thing to wean the rank and file away from it.
I gave him a chance of trying by getting a large reunion of the
Clan-na-Gael called in New York to hear him. I introduced him
to the men, many of whom were old members of the I. R. B. in
Ireland and very largely farmers' sons. O'Leary was not a good
speaker. He spoke slowly and hesitated often, but his sentences
were as perfect as if he had written them.
He pleaded for the old Fenian policy of abstention from all
Constitutional agitation and described the programme of the
Land League as unsound and immoral. The men listened quietly,
but his speech chilled them. There were several good speakers
of the plain kind at the meeting and one after another they gave
their views. Not one of them agreed with him and all favored
the Land League as a means of preparing the way for a free
Ireland. When they had all spoken I replied to him in a respect-
ful manner, but pointed out the error of his contentions. I was
vigorously applauded, and O'Leary stood up again and tried to
refute some of my arguments, but he made no impression on the
gathering. He had had no experience in debate and no talent
for it, and his second speech amounted to a complaint that it
was unfair to him to put him in such a disadvantageous position.
The meeting then proceeded on the usual lines of Clan-na-Gael
reunions, with songs and recitations, which pleased him greatly.
But after that he made no attempt to convert our men from
support of the Land League.
John O'Leary was placed on trial in Green Street Courthouse,
immediately after Luby had been sentenced on November 27,
1865. He stepped proudly into the dock, looking scornfully at the
Judges (Keogh and Fitzgerald) and was duly arraigned. He was
then 35 years of age, and was a very striking figure, with a hand-
some face, fine eyes and wearing a full, dark beard. Conviction
was a foregone conclusion, with partisan judges, promoted for
service to the Government, and a packed jury.
When asked if he had anything to say why sentence should
not be imposed on him he said:
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
287
"I was not wholly unprepared for this verdict, because I
felt that the government which could so safely pack the
bench could not fail to make sure of its verdict."
Mr. Justice Fitzgerald: "We are willing to hear anything
in reason from you, but we cannot allow language of that
kind to be used."
Mr. O'Leary: "My friend, Mr. Luby, did not wish to touch
on this matter from a natural fear, lest he should do any
harm to the other political prisoners; but there can be but
little fear of that now, for a jury has been found to con-
vict me of this conspiracy upon the evidence. Mr. Luby ad-
mitted that he was technically guilty according to British
law; but I say that it is only by the most torturing inter-
pretation that these men could make out their case against
me. With reference to this conspiracy there has been much
misapprehension in Ireland, and serious misapprehension.
Mr. Justice Keogh said in his charge against Mr. Luby that
men would be always found ready, for money, or for some
other motive, to place themselves at the disposal of the gov-
ernment; but I think the men who have been general^
bought in this way, and who certainly made the best of the
bargain, were agitators, and not rebels. I have to say one
word in reference to the foul charge upon which that miser-
able man, Barry, had made me responsible."
Mr. Justice Fitzgerald: "We cannot allow that tone of
observation."
Mr. O'Leary (continued) : "That man has charged me
— I need not defend myself or my friends from the charge.
I shall merely denounce the moral assassin. Mr. Justice
Keogh, the other day, spoke of revolutions, and adminis-
tered a lecture to Mr. Luby. He spoke of cattle being driven
away, and of houses being burned down, that men would
be killed, and so on. I would like to know if all that does
not apply to war, as well as to revolution? One word more,
and I shall have done. I have been found guilty of treason,
or of treason-felony. Treason is a foul crime. The poet
Dante consigned traitors to, I believe, the ninth circle of
hell; but what kind of traitors? Traitors against the king,
against country, against friends and benefactors. England
is not my country; I have betrayed no friend, no benefactor.
Sidney and Emmet were legal traitors, Jeffreys was a loyal
man, and so was Norbury. I leave the matter there."
CHAPTER XLIV.
THOMAS CLARKE LUBY.
A Man of Fine Literary Ability and Devotion to the Cause of
Irish Independence — Sacrificed his Prospects of Success
in Life in its Service: — Details of Prison Life of the Irish
"Convicts".
Thomas Clarke Luby, like his colleagues, John O'Leary and
Charles J. Kickham, was a man of fine literary attainments and
wide reading. A little older than they, he took part in the Young
Ireland movement and was personally acquainted with all its
leaders. His father was a Protestant minister and a Fellow of
Trinity College, and all the avenues of advancement were open
to him if he was loyal to the British Government. But he threw
away all his chances of success in life by joining the 'Forty-
Eight Movement. In this he was like all the Fenian leaders,
whose spirit of self-sacrifice was their most conspicuous quality.
He belonged to the most extreme section of the movement, and
was a follower first of John Mitchel and later of James Fintan
Lalor, with whose doctrines on the Land Question he was in full
agreement.
Although his father was a Protestant minister, his mother
was a Catholic — a very rare combination anywhere and unheard
of until then in Ireland. And she was a militant Catholic at
that, and in constant controversy with her husband's relatives,
who, though not bigots, used to tease her on religion for amuse-
ment. Her son, Thomas, married a Presbyterian, Letitia Frazer,
daughter of "Jean de Jean" Frazer, one of the minor poets of
the old Nation and perhaps the most anti-English of them all.
The intensity of his Nationalism may be judged by these lines:
"What hatred of perverted might
The cruel hand inspires
That robs the linnet's eye of light
To make it sing both day and night,
Yet so they robbed our sires.
Denial met our just demands
And hatred met our love,
Till now, by Heaven, for grasp of hands
We'll give them clash of battle brands
And gauntlet 'stead of glove.
And may the Saxon stamp his heel
Upon the coward's front
Who sheathes his own unbroken steel
Until for mercy tyrants kneel
Who forced us to the brunt."
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THOMAS CLARKE LUBY
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
289
Frazer's sires came from the Scottish Highlands, not from
the King's County, where he was born. They probably came to
Ulster with James the First's Plantation and found their way
down to Offaly. But the Frazers were Gaels.
The "clash of battle brands" which Frazer promised did not
come in his time, nor in that of his children, and the tyrant was
never compelled to "kneel for mercy". Our warrior poets are
always a little too sanguine. But they keep the fighting spirit
alive, all the same. Ireland had to wait until Easter Week, 1916,
for the vindication of the fighting spirit of the race. That was
fully accomplished when less than a thousand Irish Volunteers,
including a company of the Citizen Army, armed only with
rifles, revolvers and shot guns, defied a fully equipped English
army which was reinforced to a total of 40,000 men, — and stood
their ground for six days.
But as strongly as Frazer hated the English, just as ardently
did he long for union among Irishmen of all creeds. He gave
expression to that feeling in these words:
"Then let the Orange lily be
Thy badge, my patriot brother;
The everlasting Green for me
And we for one another."
There was a curious mixture of religions in the Luby family.
Originally from Tipperary, the first of them who came to Dublin
was a sizer in Trinity College, which was established by Queen
Elizabeth to convert the Irish to Protestantism, and he became
a Protestant in order to get his degree. When Thomas Clarke
Luby was convicted of Treason-Felony, his mother (the Catholic
wife of a Protestant minister) lived with her daughter-in-law
(Thomas's Presbyterian wife), and taught Catholic doctrine to
the children with the full consent of their mother Letitia. The
religion of the boys became rather indefinite, as they grew up,
and his younger son, Jack, slipped out one evening from a party
at his father's house in 41st Street, New York, with a daughter
of General Millen on his arm and was married to her by a
Protesant minister in "The Little Church Around the Corner".
And I heard Thomas Clarke Luby himself saying "Hail Marys"
aloud in his cell in Portland. He would probably have em-
braced Catholicity but for the anti-National attitude of Cardinal
Cullen and the majority of the Catholic bishops and priests dur-
ing Fenian days.
Thomas Clarke Luby was born in Dublin on Jan. 15, 1822, and
after receiving the customary academic training became a stu-
dent of Trinity College, where he was graduated in due time.
O'Connell's Repeal agitation was in full swing as he grew to
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
manhood and the Nation was established by Charles Gavan
Duffy, Thomas Davis and John Blake Dillon in October, 1842,
when he was just twenty years old. He at once became a reader
of the paper and drank in its teachings with avidity. If he had
any touch of conservatism in his youthful mind it speedily dis-
appeared under the spell of the writings of Davis and Duffy.
He joined the Repeal Association, but never believed in
O'Connell's peaceful methods and rejected his "No Drop of Blood"
doctrine from the start. He listened to the debates in Concilia-
tion Hall between the Young Irelanders and John O'Connell (son
of the "Liberator") and his partisans, which led to the Seces-
sion; and his sympathies, like those of most of the younger men,
were entirely with the opposition. Luby, in his Life of Daniel
O'Connell, gives a very clear analysis of the whole situation.
The terrible Famine of 1847 forced the hand of the Young
Irelanders and they rushed into a policy of Insurrection without
the slightest military preparation. They were fine writers and
some of them very eloquent speakers, but not one among them
had either military training or an opportunity for acquiring it.
Their writings and speeches had converted a large number of
the young men to the gospel of force and their pride impelled
them to an effort to make good their preaching.
But the people had no arms. A few of the members of the
Confederate Clubs in Dublin had secured rifles, but not enough
to face a company of British soldiers, and a few thousand here
and there through the country were supplied with pikes. Al-
though the British army had not yet been armed with the
Enfield rifle and the old style muskets were of short range, they
were more than a match for the pike. The pike had done splen-
did work in 1798, whenever the Rebels got to close quarters with
the Britishers, but many of them were shot down before they
could reach the enemy. Once they did, the stalwart United
Irishmen in nearly every instance were able to make short work
of the soldiers and yeomen.
An appeal to arms made to a disarmed people was little short
of insanity, but it was made and the result was the fiasco at
Ballingarry, and William Smith O'Brien, the Insurgent Leader,
(a descendant of Brian Boru, Monarch of Ireland, who was one of
the greatest warriors that Ireland ever produced) , came to grief,
was arrested, tried for Treason-Felony and sent to the Penal
Colony of Van Dieman's Land. The imprisonment of nearly all
the chief Young Irelanders (a few only escaping to America
and only Duffy getting off with a short sentence) left Ireland
leaderless, and the people, depressed and demoralized by the
Famine, became an easy prey to the rotten Parliamentarians.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
291
Ireland's military reputation was hopelessly damaged by the
abject failure of the attempted insurrection, but the deprivation
of political leadership when it was most needed was a greater
calamity, from which Ireland did not recover for half a century.
Had Smith O'Brien, John Mitchel, John Martin, Thomas Francis
Meagher and the other Young Ireland leaders and the host of
young men of the Confederate Clubs who sought refuge in Amer-
ica been able to remain in the country, the treachery of Sadlier
and Keogh would have been rendered impossible and Ireland
would have been spared the dark days of the 'Fifties.
Luby would have gone to Tipperary and shared the fate of
O'Brien if he knew of his plans. Like the other young men
of the movement he was filled with chagrin at the miserable
failure. He tells in his "Recollections" of an attempt made by
himself and another young man named O'Reilly (who later be-
came a General in the Turkish army under the name of O'Reilly
Bey) to retrieve the failure by a stand-up fight in Dublin, but
it ended in a futile cab drive in the Phoenix Park, without the
firing of a single shot.
In the unfortunate quarrel between Gavan Duffy and John
Mitchel which followed the Young Irelanders' Secession from
Conciliation Hall, Luby was an ardent supporter of Mitchel. One
Split follows another in all such cases, and, although Mitchel
carried on a very effective Propaganda among the Northern
Protestants and was making rapid headway, his arrest and de-
portation put an end to his work. But the effects of the break
between Duffy and Mitchel remained, and the advanced National
Movement was wrecked.
When Duffy came out of prison he restarted the Nation, but
he was disheartened at the failure and all his old colleagues
were gone, most of them being in prison and the rest in America,
where they were struggling to make a living in a new country.
All hope of an insurrection was gone, so he turned to Parlia-
mentary agitation, was mainly instrumental in founding the
Irish Tenant League and the policy of Independent Opposition
in the British Parliament and was elected Member for New
Ross. All these efforts failed through the support given to Sadlier,
Keogh and O'Flaherty by the majority of the priests and nearly
all the Bishops.
This support continued until Sadleir committed suicide and
his dead body was found on Hampstead Heath with a phial con-
taining the dregs of prussic acid lying beside it. Many at the
time doubted the genuineness of the identification and insisted
that the body was a "stiff" from a workhouse or a prison,
292
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
placed there with the connivance of the Government, but Sadleir
was never seen again by anyone that knew him.
O'Flaherty absconded with the funds of the Revenue Depart-
ment and made his way to America where, under the name of
Stewart, he became manager of a New York theatre. He con-
tributed a number of articles which showed fine literary ability
to the New York Sun, then edited by Charles A. Dana, over the
signature of "An Old Observer". He strongly backed the Home
Rule agitation, as if trying to atone for his delinquency. I was
introduced to him in the office of the theatre by George F. Wil-
liams, City Editor of the Herald (an Englishman) who didn't
know his identity, but knew there was some mystery about him,
and "Mr. Stewart" didn't suspect that I knew he was Edmund
O'Flaherty. He looked what he was, the descendant of the Chief
of the O'Flahertys — a man of splendid physique, with a large
intellectual head, a strong handsome face, a long dark beard
just beginning to get streaked with gray, and his manners were
those of the old Irish gentleman. I often saw him afterwards,
as he took his meals at restaurants which supplied a good table
d'hote for fifty cents. We never spoke again; my cold manner
apparently made him suspect that I knew who he was.
Judge Keogh, partner in crime with Sadleir and O'Flaherty,
and who sentenced most of the Fenians to penal servitude, also
committed suicide by cutting his throat while drunk in a Belgian
hotel. It was one of the few decent acts of his whole career.
On account of the havoc wrought by the treachery of Sadleir,
Keogh and O'Flaherty, Duffy gave up in despair, turned the
Nation over to John Cashel Hoey and went to Australia, where
he later became Minister of Land and Works in the Colony of
Victoria.
Commenting on the political corruption of Keogh, Sadleir,
and others, and the support given such men by the bishops,
Charles Gavan Duffy in his parting message to the Irish people,
wrote: "till all this was changed there was no more hope for
the Irish cause than for a corpse on the dissecting table".
He has been quoted ever since without the opening qualifying
clause (here printed in Italics) although he repeatedly pointed
out the error. Luby, under the influence of his partisanship with
Mitchel, classed Duffy as a "deserter", until later in life he
changed his mind. In a speech commemorating John Mitchel's
death, he snarled out Duffy's name, laying strong emphasis on
the "Sir", the title conferred on him for his successful adminis-
tration of his Ministerial office in Victoria. But when Duffy,
then living in Nice, began to publish his splendid historical works
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
293
Luby relented and returned to his old respect and admiration
for him. When his son, Jack, then a Lieutenant in the Ameri-
can Navy, called on Duffy, when his ship stopped at Nice for a
few days and presented his father's congratulations on the great
historical work he was doing, the old veteran was very much
gratified. Duffy asked Jack Luby to convey to me a very high
compliment on some short Fenian sketches I had written in the
Irish Nation and a request that I should complete the story of
the movement. Luby himself told me of it with evident pleasure
at the funeral of William O'Donovan.
Shortly after 1848 Luby went to Australia to seek a living.
He stayed only a little while in that country and returned to Ire-
land where he joined James Fintan Lalor's small revolutionary
organization. Lalor had started a weekly paper called the
Tribune, which preached the doctrines he advocated in 1848,
and Luby became the sub-editor. But Lalor was in delicate
health and when he died in 1853 the paper died with him. I
was only eleven years old at the time and knew nothing of
Lalor, but returning from Marlborough Street school I passed
through Anglesea Street, where the office of the paper was situ-
ated, saw the crowd at the door and heard men bidding as high
as half a crown for a copy of the last number of the paper.
When I got home and told my father he said that Lalor was a
great Irishman, most of whose ancestors were slaughtered at
Mullaghmast. I did not understand the significance of that
until I grew a few years older.
From the time that Stephens took hold of the movement
Luby gave him active support and travelled a good deal with
him on his organizing tours. I met him first shortly after my
return from Algeria in 1862 and he took great interest in my
trip. One day we met in the Long Lane as I was on my way
to the Royal Dublin Society to attend Professor Pontet's French
readings and he commended my zeal to perfect my knowledge of
French. From that time on he never lost interest in me and
frequently gave me good advice as to the books I should read.
This gave me a strong affection for him, which continued un-
broken to his death. His advice on reading was well worth
taking, as he was a thoroughly well read man and a most com-
petent judge of literature. He wrote more than any other mem-
ber of the Irish People staff and his articles, although charac-
terized by fine literary skill, were so plain and direct that the
uneducated man could understand them as well as the person
of culture, and therefore they made a greater impression than
those of John O'Leary, who was a bit too philosophical and
sometimes wrote over the heads of his readers. Luby wrote rap-
294
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
idly and easily, yet he wrote one very good article on the danger
of "easy writing" becoming flippant.
Luby was a fine speaker. He began in a conversational way
and in a low voice, as if he did not intend to say much, but
gradually warmed up, raised his voice and became very eloquent
and effective. I only heard him a few times in Dublin at small
gatherings, mostly in the Irish People office, at which oratory
was not called for. One of these was on the night of February
22, 1864, after the breaking up of the Rotunda meeting from
which A. M. Sullivan was driven. He was exultant over the
result and gloated over the rout of the "respectables" and in-
terrupted Stephens two or three times while he was explaining
that he didn't intend the meeting to end in a riot, but merely
a protest made against Sullivan's "felon-setting". Stephens grew
a little impatient and appealed vainly to Luby, saying: "Luby,
Luby; hear me", but Luby paid little attention to his pleadings
and insisted that the smashing up of the meeting would have
a better effect on the country. While I agreed with Stephens, I
found, to my surprise, when I got back to Naas, that Luby was
right.
A short time before his arrest Luby, anticipating it, collected
his papers and put them in two packages, one containing docu-
ments relating to the organization and the other the letters that
passed between him and his wife before they were married. He
marked two envelopes and put the papers in the wrong ones. The
envelope containing the "Executive Document" and other organi-
zation papers he put in the open drawer of a table which he used
as a desk supposing them to be the love letters, and the latter he
secreted somewhere in the house. The detectives found the "Ex-
ecutive Document" in the wrongly marked envelope during their
first search, and this gave the Crown lawyers all the evidence
they required for the conviction of the three men named in it —
Luby, O'Leary and Kickham. The powers which it conferred on
them had never been exercised, as no emergency arose during the
period while Stephens was absent in America. Kickham had
never seen it, and probably did not know of its existence.
The "Executive Document" was as follows:
"I hereby empower Thomas Clarke Luby, John O'Leary
and Charles J. Kickham a committee of organization, or
executive, with the same supreme control over the home
organization in England, Ireland and Scotland as that exer-
cised by myself. I further empower them to appoint a com-
mittee of military inspection, and a committee of appeal
and judgment, the functions of which committees will be
made known to every member of them. Trusting to the
patriotism and abilities of the executive, I fully endorse their
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
295
actions beforehand. I call on every man in our ranks to sup-
port and be guided by them in all that concerns the mili-
tary brotherhood.
"J. Stephens."
Luby was sentenced to twenty years penal servitude and took
the sentence calmly. He was taken immediately to Mount] oy
Prison, put into convict garb, his hair cut short and his beard
shaved off. Until he was joined a few days later by John O'Leary,
O'Donovan Rossa and Kickham, he took his exercise alone (an
hour daily) in the ring surrounded by an iron railing in the
prison yard.
As the number of convicted men grew they were all removed
to Pentonville Prison, London. After about a year there they
were sent to Portland. This practice was continued with all the
men sentenced to penal servitude, which meant five years or
more, those who got a lighter sentence being kept in the Irish
prisons.
In the so-called "probation" prisons, in London, where the
prisoners spent the first nine, ten or twelve months, the work
was picking oakum — tearing old tar ropes to floss; or coir — an
Indian grass out of which mats were made. The day's work
at oakum picking was three pounds; that of coir was twenty
ounces; and both blistered the fingers very badly in the be-
ginning, particularly the oakum. The delicate hands of Luby,
O'Leary and Kickham suffered very badly, but failure to com-
plete the allotted task was punished by twenty-four hours on
bread and water — one pound of dry bread and two pints of
water. A good natured warder (and there were many such)
sometimes allowed the prisoner to get more water. When the
prisoner was sentenced to more than three days' bread and water
he was put on "penal class" diet every fourth day — a pint of
oatmeal porridge morning and evening, supposed to be made
of milk and water, but no milk with it. The regular diet in the
"probation" prisons (Pentonville and Millbank) was sixteen
ounces of bread, three-quarters of a pint of cocoa, four ounces
of beef "cooked in its own liquor", and a pint of gruel, supposed
to contain two ounces of oatmeal and a pound of potatoes (often
half rotten) daily. On Sundays, the bread ration was 20 ozs.,
and 4 ozs. of cheese as an extra. In the "Public Works" prisons
(Portland, Portsmouth, Chatham and Dartmoor) an ounce of
meat and three ounces of bread were added. The big men like
Rossa, Martin Hanley, Carey and Sergeant McCarthy, starved on
this diet, and I was constantly hungry for four years, but other-
wise in good health.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
In all cases of "bread and water", the prisoner's mattress and
bed clothes (except one blanket or rag) were removed from his
cell and he had to sleep on the bare board bed, which was fas-
tened to the floor. His shoes and suspenders were also taken
away.
Neither Luby, O'Leary nor Kickham ever got this punishment;
Rossa got it constantly and I got it occasionally. But the dark
cell was the severest punishment.
The work was occasionally changed to tailoring — making con-
vict uniforms, trousers, jackets, vests and drawers, which were
handed in basted together, and the prisoner did the back stitch-
ing and hemming.
In Portland, the work was stone-cutting — making "knobblers"
from Portland stone (which was soft) with a blunt pick. This
work in the beginning caused very bad blisters on the hands.
In Portsmouth, Chatham and Dartmoor the work was of various
kinds, but all hard. This was England's way of taming the
Fenians, but they all remained untamed to the last.
Neither Luby nor O'Leary was much of a success at making
knobblers, and it was painful to look at them handling the pick.
Stone cutting was, of course, utterly impossible for Kickham. I
was glad to get the open air exercise after nearly two years' close
confinement and it did me good. At exercise on Sundays the
prisoners were allowed to talk, and I had many pleasant talks
with Luby and O'Leary during my twelve weeks in Portland.
Then I was sent back to the Penal Class in Millbank for parti-
cipating in a strike. The English warders were down on the
Americans, but made some allowance for the born Irishman.
McClure, James O'Connor and Charles Underwood O'Connell, who
had all struck, were sent back with me. Luby and O'Leary ad-
vised against the strike on the ground that we "couldn't fight
England in her own prisons", but after McClure and myself had
continued it in Millbank for a few months we won the strike
for all concerned. The prison doctor (of course acting under
orders) was the mediator and he was aided by some good natured
lying by an Irish Cockney warder named Nash (a very decent
fellow) , but we didn't put our hands to work until we were
restored to the regular prison diet and taken out of the Penal
Class cells. The doctor's pretext for interfering was that 1868
was an abnormally hot year in England.
When some years later I told our experience to Luby in New
York he admitted that, after all, it was possible to fight John
Bull in his own prisons. John was breaking his own printed rules
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
297
(or Sir Joshua Jebb's) which were embodied in an Act or Par-
liament, and he did not want to face continual public exposures.
When Luby was released in January, 1871, on condition of not
returning to the "United Kingdom" during the balance of his
existence (the condition on which Gladstone liberated all the
Fenian prisoners at that time), he went first to Belgium and
then in a few months came to New York.
In New York he had no chance of employment on a daily
paper. The Irish-American weeklies were out of the question;
they were unable to pay a decent salary and were all out of har-
mony with his views. And as he was not a citizen, political em-
ployment was impossible, although at that time many non-citi-
zens held minor political positions. Indeed about a week after the
first batch of us landed we got a quiet intimation that Presi-
dent Grant was willing to give any of us who wanted it a clerk-
ship in one of the Washington Departments at $1,200 or $1,500
a year, but none of us availed ourselves of the offer. Luby's deli-
cate sense of honor convinced him that it would be entirely
out of place for a man to seek political employment in a country
of which he was not a citizen.
He eventually was engaged by a publisher named McMena-
min at a small salary to write the "Lives of Illustrious Irish-
men" and "The Life of Daniel O'Connell", which came out in
parts and were sold by canvassers throughout the country.
Luby for some time would not join any Irish organization
here. He had a theory that when a movement failed the ground
ought to be let lie fallow until a new situation arose and then
the people could form an organization suitable to the emergency.
All his colleagues in New York disagreed with this view and be-
lieved there should be a permanent organization with a clear
and definite purpose. The English Government, we argued, was
a permanent organization with a fixed purpose and should be
fought by a permanent organization having for its object the
overthrow of English rule in Ireland and the restoration of Irish
Independence, and ready to take advantage of any opportunity
that might arise. He eventually yielded to our pleadings and
joined the Clan-na-Gael, in which he took an active part for
some years. He also consented to act as one of the Trustees of the
"Skirmishing Fund" and wrote the address to the Irish people
in America explaining the broadening of its aims and changing
the name to the Irish National Fund. He never missed a meet-
ing and was present at the one which accepted the plans for
and decided to undertake the construction of the Holland sub-
marine.
298
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
When John Mitchel died in 1875, we got up a memorial
meeting for him in Madison Square Garden, at which Thomas
Francis Bourke presided and Luby delivered the address. John
W. Goff was District Officer for New York and I was Chairman
of the Executive of the Clan-na-Gael. Goff tried to make a bar-
gain with me by which I should preside and he deliver the
oration. I refused because I was only a reporter on the Herald
and Goff a cashier in one of the departments of A. T. Stewart's
drygoods store, and it would look bad if two men in such humble
positions and unknown to the public should be the chief figures
at a demonstration in honor of the great Rebel, while there were
so many men of prominence and ability in New York to perform
the task. I pointed out this to Goff and told him the English
press would use the opportunity to say that the Irish movement
in America had reached a very low ebb when a reporter on a
daily paper and a draper's assistant were its leaders in New York.
(Some thirty years later John W. Goff became one of the most
eminent judges on the Supreme Court Bench, New York.)
Luby and Bourke agreed with me that Richard O'Gorman,
who was a great orator and very well known to the public, was
the proper man to deliver the speech for his old colleague of
1848, but the local officers voted down my proposition because
O'Gorman had taken no part in Irish affairs since his arrival
in the country and was active only in American politics.
At the meeting of the officers of the District which arranged
for the Mitchel meeting, Goff presided at the opening session
and showed no opposition until John O'Connor was selected as
Chairman of the committee and James Fitzgerald (later a Judge
of the Supreme Court) Secretary. Then he left the chair, went
to the centre of the hall and said: "Brothers, you have insulted
your District Member and I don't propose to let you trample on
me. I forbid the meeting." He requested Fitzgerald and me to
walk out with him, but we both refused. He then inserted an
advertisement in the Herald, signed with his official initials say-
ing that the persons who were getting up the meeting had no
authority, brought the receipt for the ad. to Billy Meighan, the
City Editor, told him he was the chief officer of the Clan-na-
Gael in the city and asked him to insert a news paragraph to
the same effect. Meighan brought the ad. to me at the Foreign
Desk (which I was occupying temporarily) and told me to do
what I liked with it. I wrote a column and a half of an advance
notice of the meeting, sent shorter notices to John C. Hennessy
of the Times, Walter O'Dwyer of the Tribune, and John Gallagher
of the World, and they were all inserted next day.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
299
The Commemoration was a great success — the first success-
ful Irish gathering in New York since the collapse of Fenianism.
Bourke, who was one of the most eloquent men in the movement,
made a splendid speech in opening the meeting, and Luby's
address was a most eloquent tribute to John Mitchel. No other
man in New York, not even the silver-tongued O'Gorman, could
have done it half so well. We had only two speakers.
I go into these details to show the difficulties we had to con-
tend with before the Clan-na-Gael was finally hammered into
shape and made the efficient and disciplined organization which
it later became.
During the next two or three years Luby rendered other con-
spicuous services, but when the Triangle got hold of the organi-
zation and adopted the dynamite policy, in spite of the opposi-
tion of the Supreme Council of the I. R. B. in Ireland, he resigned
and took no further active part in the movement.
Luby died on Nov. 29, 1901, in Jersey City, where he had moved
when his son, James, became Editor of the Journal, and was
buried in Bay View Cemetery in that city. I was away from New
York at the time and missed the funeral, which I regretted very
much. I had been out of touch with the family for some time
and didn't know that he was sick.
On June 10, 1911, the Clan-na-Gael, the Veterans of the
I. R. Brotherhood and the Irish Volunteers of New York and
New Jersey, decorated his grave and there was a great demon-
stration attended by thousands of people. I delivered the address
and his son James represented the family. The cemetery was
filled with people decorating the graves of relatives who had
fought in the Civil War, and when I was done speaking a fashion-
ably dressed lady came over to me and asked: "Are all these
men Irish Catholics?" I told her that most of them were, and
she said: "And they attend a ceremony in a Protestant ceme-
tery." I told her that Luby was a Protestant, like Robert Emmet,
William Smith O'Brien, Charles Stewart Parnell, Henry Grattan
and many other Irish Leaders, and she expressed surprise and
said: "I thought all the Irish Leaders were Catholics."
In spite of all proof to the contrary, this is still the prevailing
opinion in America, and it seems impossible to eradicate it. Cen-
turies of lying English Propaganda have fastened this belief in
the minds of nearly the whole if not all the people of the world,
and particularly the Americans, and it will take a long time to
banish it. This Jersey City woman was a fine specimen of the
average American.
300
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Thomas Clarke Luby had the temperament of a boy to the
last and he was as optimistic when he died as he was in 1848.
He never despaired of the ultimate Independence of Ireland. His
life was one long sacrifice, but he made it cheerfully and never
for a moment regretted that he immolated himself on the altar
of his country.
Luby's speech in the dock was as follows:
"Well, my lords and gentlemen, I don't think any person
present here is surprised at the verdict found against me.
I have been prepared for this verdict ever since I was ar-
rested, although I thought it my duty to fight the British
Government inch by inch. I felt I was sure to be found
guilty, since the advisers of the Crown took what the Attor-
ney-General was pleased the other day to call the 'merciful
course.' I thought I might have a fair chance of escaping,
so long as the capital charge was impending over me; but
when they resolved on trying me under the Treason-Felony
Act, I felt that I had not the smallest chance. I am some-
what embarrassed at the present moment as to what I
should say under the circumstances. There are a great
many things that I would wish to say; but knowing that
there are other persons in the same situation with myself,
and that I might allow myself to say something injudicious,
which would peril their cases, I feel that my tongue is to a
great degree tied. Notwithstanding, there are two or three
points upon which I would say a few words. I have nothing
to say to Judge Keogh's charge to the jury. He did not take
up any of the topics that had been introduced to prejudice
the case against me; for instance, he did not take this ac-
cusation of an intention to assassinate, attributed to my fel-
low prisoners and myself. The Solicitor-General in his reply
to Mr. Butt, referred to those topics. Mr. Barry was the first
person who advanced those charges. I thought they were
partially given up by the Attorney-General in his opening
statement, at least they were put forward to you in a very
modified form; but the learned Solicitor-General, in his
very virulent speech, put forward those charges in a most
aggravated manner. He sought even to exaggerate upon Mr.
Barry's original statement.
"Now, with respect to those charges — in justice to my
character — I must say that in this court, there is not a man
more incapable of anything like massacre or assassination
than I am. I really believe that the gentlemen who have
shown so much ability in prosecuting me, in the bottom of
their hearts believe me incapable of an act of assassination
or massacre. I don't see that there is the smallest amount
of evidence to show that I ever entertained the notion of a
massacre of landlords and priests. I forget whether the ad-
visers of the Crown said I intended the massacre of the
Protestant clergymen. Some of the writers of our enlight-
ened press said that I did. Now, with respect to the charge
of assassinating the landlords, the only thing that gives
even the shadow of a color to that charge is the letter
signed— alleged to be signed — by Mr. O'Keefe. Now, as-
suming— but by no means admitting, of course — that the
letter was written by Mr. O'Keefe, let me make a statement
about it. I know the facts that I am about to state are of
no practical utility to me now, at least with respect to the
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
301
judges. I know that it is of no practical utility to me, be-
cause I cannot give evidence on my own behalf, but it may
be of practical utility to others with whom I wish to stand
well. I believe my words will carry conviction — and carry
much more conviction than any words of the legal advisers
of the Crown can — to more than 300,000 of the Irish race
in Ireland, England and America. Well, I deny absolutely,
that I ever entertained any idea of assassinating the land-
lords, and the letter of Mr. O'Keefe — assuming it to be his
letter — is the only evidence on the subject. My acquaintance
with Mr. O'Keefe was of the slightest nature. I did not
even know of his existence when the Irish People was
started. He came, after that paper was established a few
months, to the office and offered some articles — some were
rejected, some were inserted, and I call the attention of the
legal advisers of the Crown to this fact, that amongst the
papers which they got, those that were Mr. O'Keefe's ar-
ticles had many paragraphs scored out; in fact we put in
no article of his without a great deal of what is technically
called 'cutting down'. Now, that letter of his to me was
simply a private document. It contained the mere private
views of the writer; and I pledge this to the court as a man
of honor — and I believe in spite of the position in which
I stand, amongst my countrymen I am believed to be a man
of honor, and that if my life depended on it, I would not
speak falsely about the thing — when I read that letter, and
the first to whom I gave it was my wife, I remember we read
it with fits of laughter at its ridiculous ideas. My wife,
at the moment said — 'Had I not better burn the letter?' 'Oh,
no,' I said, looking upon it as a most ridiculous thing, and
never dreaming for a moment that such a document would
ever turn up against me, and produce the unpleasant con-
sequences it has produced — I mean the imputation of assassi-
nation and massacre, which has given me a great deal more
trouble than anything else in this case.
"That disposes — as far as I can at present dispose of it —
of the charge of wishing to assassinate the landlords. As
to the charge of desiring to assassinate the priests, I deny
it as being the most monstrous thing in the world. Why,
surely, every one who read the articles in the paper would
see that the plain doctrine laid down there was — to rever-
ence the priests so long as they confined themselves to their
sacerdotal functions; but when the priest descended to the
arena of politics he became no more than any other man,
and would just be regarded as any other man. If he was a
man of ability and honesty, of course he would get the re-
spect that such men get in politics — if he was not a man
of ability there would be no more thought of him than of
a shoemaker, or any one else. This is the teaching of the
Irish People with regard to the priests. I believe the Irish
People has done a great deal of good, even amongst those
who do not believe in its revolutionary doctrines. I believe
the revolutionary doctrines of the Irish People are good, I
believe nothing can ever save Ireland except Independence;
and I believe that all other attempts to ameliorate the con-
dition of Ireland are mere temporary expedients and make-
shifts—"
Mr. Justice Keogh: "I am very reluctant to interrupt
you, Mr. Luby."
Mr. Luby: "Very well, my Lord, I will leave that. I be-
lieve in this way the Irish People has done an immensity of
302
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
good. It taught the people not to give up their right of
private judgment in temporal matters to the clergy; that
while they reverenced the clergy upon the altar, they should
not give up their consciences in secular matters to the clergy.
I believe that is good. Others may differ from me. No set
of men I believe ever set themselves earnestly to any work,
but they did good in some shape or form."
Judge Keogh: "I am most reluctant, Mr. Luby, to inter-
rupt you, but do you think you should pursue this?"
Mr. Luby: "Very well, I will not. I think that disposes
of those things. I don't care to say much about myself. It
would be rather beneath me. Perhaps some persons who
know me would say I should not have touched upon the
assassination charge at all — that in fact I have rather shown
weakness in attaching so much importance to it. But, with
regard to the entire course of my life, and whether it be
a mistaken course or not will be for every man's individual
judgment to decide, this I know, that no man ever loved
Ireland more than I have done — no man has given up his
whole being to Ireland to the extent I have done. From
the time I came to what has been called the years of discre-
tion, my entire thought has been devoted to Ireland. I be-
lieve the course I pursued was right; others may take a dif-
ferent view. I believe the majority of my countrymen this
minute, if, instead of my being tried before a petty jury,
who, I suppose, are bound to find according to British law —
if my guilt or innocence was to be tried by the higher
standard of eternal right, and the case was put to all my
countrymen — I believe this moment the majority of my
countrymen would pronounce that I am not a criminal, but
that I have deserved well of my country.
"When the proceedings of this trial go forth into the world,
people will say the cause of Ireland is not to be despaired
of, that Ireland is not yet a lost country — that as long as
there are men in any country prepared to expose themselves
to every difficulty and danger, in its service, prepared to
brave captivity, even death itself, if need be, that country
cannot be lost. With those words I conclude."
Luby was the first of the Fenian leaders to be placed on trial
before the Special Commission, consisting of Judges Keogh and
Fitzgerald. The evidence against the three consisted of the testi-
mony of the informer, Pierce Nagle, and a Polish Jew named
Schoelfeldt, who had purchased a Fenian Bond for $5, with money
given him by the British Consul in New York, and asked John
O'Mahony to affix his signature to it, so that he might keep it
as a souvenir. This enabled the latter to testify to O'Mahony's
signature.
Schoelfeldt was on the ship with a Tipperary man coming to
America who was entrusted with a letter to John O'Mahony, and
he showed it to the Pole who told him he sympathized with
Ireland's struggle for freedom. The Polish insurrection led by
Langievicz (a former Lieutenant in the Prussian army) was then
going on. All Ireland was in sympathy with it, and the Tip-
perary man foolishly thought that all Poles were to be trusted.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
303
The Jew asked to be permitted to accompany him when he
went to see the great Irishman and he was, and O'Mahony, sus-
pecting nothing, complied with the fellow's request. That bond
with O'Mahony's signature enabled the Government to prove the
existence of an international conspiracy.
But the chief evidence against Luby, O'Leary and Kickham
was the "Executive Document".
CHAPTER XLV.
CHARLES J. KICKHAM.
The Finest Intellect of the Fenian Movement — Had Great Liter-
ary Ability and a Keen Grasp of Public Affairs — His Stories
and Songs an Inspiration.
Charles J. Kickham was the finest intellect in the Fenian
Movement, either in Ireland or America, although his defective
sight and hearing prevented the demonstration of that fact in
public. One would have to know him personally and to see his
work in council to realize the superiority of his mind over those
of his colleagues and contemporaries.
Kickham was born at Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary, near the
foot of Slievenamon on the 9th of May, 1828. His mother's
maiden name was O'Mahony and she was a cousin of John
O'Mahony, the founder of the Fenian Movement. He came of a
very well-to-do family and received the training of an Irish boy of
his class up to fourteen years of age, when the accident happened
which changed the whole course of his life. Boy-like, he was
holding a flask of powder near a fire to dry it, and, as might be
expected, it exploded, with the unfortunate result that he was
rendered nearly blind and almost completely deaf. Though thus
handicapped, he read extensively and studied hard and became
better informed than any of his relatives and neighbors. The
habit of introspection acquired in his solitude, in the opinion of
John O'Leary, helped to develop his intellect and the remaining
senses became more acute and efficient, as nature's compensation
for the practical loss of sight and hearing.
Kickham had great literary ability and a wide knowledge of
modern literature, although reading was a most difficult task for
him. His stories depict life in Tipperary as completely as those
of William Carleton, Gerald Griffin and John Banim do that of
the sections of whose people they wrote, but there is a charm in
Kickham that is entirely absent from the others. I exclude Lever,
because he wrote chiefly for the English market and his heroes
were mostly Anglo-Irishmen, to whom he gave old Irish names.
His principal stories are "Knocknagow"; "Sally Cavanagh,
or the Untenanted Graves"; "For The Old Land", and "Tales of
Tipperary" (a collection of short stories) .
304
CHARLES J. KICKHAM
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL 305
Kickham's notes on "Young Ireland" by Charles Gavan Duffy,
have never been published in book form and his poems have not
been collected.
"Patrick Sheehan" was a simple ballad telling the story of an
Irish soldier wounded in the Crimean War, made blind, and left
utterly unprovided for by the British Government. It at once
caught the popular ear and was sung as a street ballad at fairs
and markets and the Government was forced by the publicity to
grant Sheehan a small pension.
Kickham was one of the four most prominent men in the
old movement, and as Chairman of the Supreme Council for sev-
eral years before he died was the unchallenged leader of the
reorganized I. R. B. The personal affection for him of the rank
and file, although they saw little of him (and conversation with
him was nearly impossible) , amounted almost to adoration.
While his books were widely read, that would not account for
his popularity, but his "Rory of the Hill", the finest of all the
Rebel ballads, was sung more generally than any other National-
ist song except T. D. Sullivan's "God Save Ireland". There is
sound philosophy, as well as political truth which is as plain
to the peasant as to the scholar, in the lines:
"The poet and the orator the heart of man can sway,
And would to the kind heavens that Wolfe Tone were
here to-day!
Yet trust me, friends, dear Ireland's strength — her
truest strength — is still
The rough and ready roving boys like Rory of the
Hill."
The heart of the Irish people is always sound, no matter how
leaders may err or how the rank and file may be misled for a
time.
There is no finer story of Irish life than "Knocknagow". I
quote the following brief but excellent note on its characters
from a Memoir of Kickham, by R. J. Kelly:
"It is a very vigorous work of peasant portraiture, and its
characters are well-known types. It shows what O'Leary
said the writer possessed in a rare degree — thorough knowl-
edge of the people and, with that thorough knowledge,
thorough and sincere sympathy. No one who has once read
it can soon forget Matt Donovan, the Thrasher, who excelled
in all kinds of work as a farm labourer, and who never met
his match at wielding a flail. 'He could turn a hand to any-
thing, soleing a pair of brogues to roofing and thatching a
barn'. Then there is Billy Heffernan, the flute-player, al-
ways lonely on his way to Clonmel but a king in his humble
cottage and on the bog. Phil Lahy, trusted so much to a
little nourishment and Columkille's prophecies. Nellie Dono-
van, stoutest and airiest of peasant girls; the racy Wattle-
toes; poor Norah Lahy, an angel in the shadow of death;
306 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Mary Kearney, one of Nature's ladies; the heart-heavy, true-
souled priest, who yet to the world's view had a proud walk,
Father Matt Hannigan, and Hugh Kearney, the young
farmer — all these stand out in its pages never to be forgotten.
The times they depict, when landlord exaction and tenant
wrongs led to heartless evictions, as so touchingly described,
are happily now things of the past; but while the Anner
flows beside Kickham's grave these men and these times
can never be forgotten. Then how beautifully and simply
the story closes. These are the last words: 'It is very
pleasant', returned Mary, 'Thank God there are happy homes
in Tipperary still'. But she added as she turned round and
looked along the two low whitish walls that reached from
'the Cross' to Matt Donovan's: 'But Knocknagow is gone.'"
No sweeter bit of Irish verse was written in English than:
"She lived beside the Anner
At the foot of Slievenamon,"
telling the pathetic story of an Irish emigrant girl. Its only rival
is Lady Dufferin's "Irish Emigrant's Lament".
Kickham's ability is not to be measured by his writings, al-
though they give him a high place. He displayed knowledge of
men that was remarkable on account of the paucity of his in-
formation about them and his inability to see and hear them,
but his estimates of their character and ability were all correct
It was the same with public events and foreign affairs. His
reading of newspapers was necessarily limited, but his capacity
for grasping the meaning of events from short despatches and
editorial comment was wonderful. He was a perfect master of
Irish politics, was quite familiar with the general trend of Euro-
pean affairs, knew England thoroughly and had a better under-
standing of America than many men who read newspapers exten-
sively. Yet his reading had to be done with his spectacles lifted
up to his forehead, his hand shading his eyes, and the book,
paper or letter held within a couple of inches of them. Conversa-
tion with him for many years had to be carried on by the aid
of an ear trumpet, and for a long time before he died by means
of the deaf and dumb alphabet. Yet the man so handicapped was
able to preside at important council meetings and to contribute
a goodly share to the discussions.
The size and shape of a man's head is not always a safe guide
to his ability, but Kickham's head enclosed a very efficient brain.
It was so large that his hat went down over the top of my ears,
while the same size fitted O'Donovan Rossa, Thomas Francis
Bourke, Ricard O'Sullivan Burke and myself, and each of us had
larger than the average sized Irish head. Dr. George Sigerson,
who had a fine mind, had precisely the same kind of massive
head as Kickham.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
307
Elisee Reclus in his great work on Physical Geography says
that the skulls of the Bohemians (who are fairly representative
of all the Slavs) indicated greater natural brain power than
those of the Teutons and that it was the better education and
training of the Germans which gave them their superiority. The
Slav head is very like the Celtic. A German barber in the
Foreign Legion once said that the heads of the Irishmen were
like a "brosse a Tripoli" — the long brush with which the brass
buttons of the blue tunic then worn by the French infantry,
when inserted in a button stick, were cleaned — and he found
those of many Bavarians and Rhine Prussians the same. That
was because of the strong Celtic strain in their blood. If he had
had experience with Piedmontese (who are Cisalpine Gauls)
and the Galician Spaniards (who are purer Celtic than the Irish)
he would have made a similar remark.
Kickham was deeply interested in national affairs from his
young manhood and was the real leader in Tipperary, but I be-
lieve it was not until 1860 that he joined the I. R. B. In 1863
Stephens put him on the editorial staff of the Irish People.
One of Kickham's few appearances at public meetings was
at an open air gathering on Slievenamon. A group of well
meaning, but irresponsible men, of whom John F. Finerty (then
only twenty years of age) was one and Father Horan of Toome-
vara another, had been holding public meetings, at which fiery
speeches were made, but no resolutions passed, and they attracted
the attention of the English Government to such an extent that
Lord Carlisle, the Lord Lieutenant, undertook to reply to them
at a cattle show at Callan, County Kilkenny. The Viceroy's
speech was characteristic of the man and the time, and he used
a phrase that has become historic because it revealed the settled
policy of the Government. He said there were "two voices" in
Ireland, one speaking in wild and violent accents from the top
of Slievenamon and the other at peaceful gatherings like the
cattle show at which he was speaking. Ireland, he said, was
"destined by Providence to be the fruitful mother of flocks and
herds". This disclosed the purpose of the Government in the
great Clearances then going on, of replacing human beings by
cattle for the English market. The man who had been caught,
with another English aristocrat, in the Sultan's harem in Con-
stantinople and had the traditional punishment inflicted on him,
undertook to be the interpreter of the will of Providence. Napo-
leon once said that God was on the side of the heavy artillery,
but England always claimed to be doing the Lord's work in
carrying out her Imperialist policy and imposing her will on
other peoples.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Stephens ordered the useless public meetings stopped and
sent Kickham to Tipperary to preside at one already called and
announce that it would be the last. He did the work as well and
tactfully as if he had been in the habit of presiding at meetings
all his life and no further gatherings were held.
In 1863, Kickham visited the United States. Some people
hold that he was sent here by Stephens as an official Envoy to
the Fenian Brotherhood. Others claim that his visit was on
private business, and that while here he was invited to attend
the Convention which the Fenian Brotherhood held in Chicago
while a great fair was in progress in that city to raise funds for
the organization. At all events, he made a fine impression on
the Fenian leaders in America, and accomplished good results
while in this country. The Scanlan brothers with Henry C.
McCarthy, were then the leading men in Chicago, P. W. Dunne
not yet having moved there from Peoria. Michael Scanlan, the
Poet Laureate of American Fenianism, had a hobby for giving
his children old Irish names and a son was born to him during
the fair, who is now (1928) one of the leading judges in Chicago.
Kickham became his Godfather and he was christened Kickham
Scanlan. He is a credit to the name he bears, a man of high
character and great ability, who, when nominated for the Bench
by the Republicans, ran away ahead of his ticket and secured
many Democratic votes. He is fearless and resolute in fighting
corruption in public life and has the public confidence to an
unusual degree. He is a tall, slim man, with finely chiselled
features, typical of the best intellect of the race.
Under the heading "Leaves from a Journal", Kickman wrote
an account of his trip, dealing only with the public part of it.
and giving his impressions of America, but saying nothing of his
negotiations with the American Fenian leaders. It was pub-
lished in the Irish People and made very interesting reading.
From the time of his return from America in 1864, until his
arrest with James Stephens on November 11, 1865, Kickham's
life was uneventful. He wrote articles in the Irish People, lived
quietly and attended no meetings. There were no meetings of
any importance during that period anyhow.
Kickham was placed on trial before the Special Commission,
consisting of Judges Keogh and Fitzgerald, in Green Street Court-
house, Dublin, on January 5, 1866. At the opening his defence
was conducted by counsel; but on the judges' refusal to have
Thomas Clarke Luby produced as a witness, he declared the
trial was a mockery and refused to have any further legal as-
sistance.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
309
At his trial there was practically no evidence against him
except the production of the "Executive Document", and Pierce
Nagle's testimony about his membership in the organization.
O'Donovan Rossa's sensational attacks on Judge Keogh were
really intended to give Kickham time to prepare his defence,
as he was to be tried after Rossa. Keogh sentenced Kickham to
fifteen years' penal servitude, mainly in revenge for the articles
he wrote in the Irish People concerning the "hanging judge" for
sentencing the two McCormack brothers to death on the charge
of killing a Tipperary landlord (whom they had not killed), on
wholly insufficient and mainly perjured evidence which a packed
jury accepted as true. Kickham addressed the jury in his own
defense.
The following is a newspaper account of the trial, in which
I have made a few slight verbal changes:
"He began by saying that a person unaccustomed as he was
to public speaking could hardly get out his ideas at all with-
out preparation, and he had no time. However, he made no
objection to go on. No prisoner, he continued, had ever been
treated more unfairly than he was. Not only had he to bear his
share of calumny, but from the commencement of the Commis-
sion, in every speech made by the counsel for the Crown, his
name was dragged in, and not alone that, but even judges on the
bench did it. He could not but feel a little surprised when one
of the judges read out the names from the 'Executive Docu-
ment'— Luby, O'Leary and Kickham — and said he shuddered at
the crimes these judges would commit if they had the power. He
could not help thinking that his Lordship should have recol-
lected that there was one of these men who was not yet tried,
and who might be innocent of even knowing the existence of
this document. So that he considered he had been tried and
found guilty five times in that Courthouse, and he did not know
how many times in Cork.
"He would now go through the articles in the indictment,
but would not read them all. The first article was one headed
' '82 and '29'. If they took the trouble of reading through that
article, they would be at a loss to see why it was that so long an
article, with so little treason in it, should have the place of
honor. They might not agree with the writer, but, nevertheless,
what he said was true, that it would have been well for Ireland
that the claims of the loyal Volunteers of '82 had been refused,
for the result would have been complete Independence. And let
them look back upon the history of this country — not a gleam
of sunshine, the sufferings of the people, and the Exodus. What
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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
Irishman could look upon the eighty-four years which had passed
and would not say: 'In God's name, give us our country to our-
selves, and let us see what we can do with it.'
"There was not much Treason in that. Perhaps it was in the
'29 part of the article the Treason was. The purport of that
portion was, that if the English Government refused Emanci-
pation, the Roman Catholics would have taken up arms, and
that the liberal Protestants would have joined them. The Duke
of Wellington said the same thing, and he must say that a
Bishop in America was so oblivious of his allegiance as to organ-
ize forty thousand armed Fenians, to send them to Ireland, if
the Government refused Emancipation.
"There was one good thing that the Fenians did. He said that
concessions to Ireland had been always the result of Fenianism
in some shape or other. The English Government, however,
while making concessions, always expected to get something
in return; and, he believed, they had never been disappointed.
Not only had they stipulated upon getting prompt pay-
ment, but, also, they got a large instalment in advance. And
here he could not help referring to the publication of Sir John
Gray's affidavit, which he stated he withheld, afraid it would
injure the prisoners on their trial, and yet that very affidavit
was published on the eve of his trial.
"To return to the article ' '82 and '29', he repeated, they
would find very little Treason in it. Why, then, had it been
placed on the front of the indictment? That was done for a
passage in it referring to Roman Catholic judges, and Roman
Catholic placemen, in which it was said: 'The Catholic judge
will prove as iniquitous a tool of tyranny, as the most bigoted
Orange partisan would be.' It would not do for the Attorney-
General to select articles in which one of the judges was men-
tioned by name in the severest language. That would be going
too far. Judge Keogh said he had never seen a copy of the Irish
People, and Kickham believed that if his Lordship had seen these
articles, he would have tried to avoid sitting in judgment on the
men who were accused of being the writers of them.
"But the Attorney-General knew of them, and he believed that
the articles he alluded to had been placed in the front for the
purpose of prejudicing Roman Catholic judges against the pris-
oners they would have to try; and the Special Commission was
appointed — if that was the word — for the sole purpose of en-
abling them to select the judges, and that it was the best mode
of following up the attempt to put down the organization, by
trampling on the law, and then following that up by trampling
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
311
on the law of morality and decency. If it were necessary to in-
terrupt him, Mr. Lawless would communicate their Lordships'
wishes to him.
"Justice Keogh: 'Not at all. Proceed.'
"The prisoner went on to say that the jury might be told that
all this was beside the question. But he denied this. He empha-
sized that English rule in Ireland was on trial. The Gov-
ernment admitted the existence of a wide-spread conspiracy,
both in Ireland and America; but this only showed that the
treatment by England of Ireland had been judged and con-
demned.
"After a number of observations of an exculpatory character,
he quoted Thomas Davis:
" 'The tribune's tongue and poet's pen
May sow the seed in slavish men,
But 'tis the soldier's sword alone
Can reap the harvest when 'tis grown.'
"The man who wrote those lines did his best to make the Irish
people a military people. A few years before his death his
friends observed in his library a number of military books, such
as those found in the office of the Irish People, and he would
say, 'These are what Irishmen want — this is what they should
learn.' His statue, by Hogan, is now in Mount Jerome. The
whole Nation mourned his death, and all creeds and classes
gathered round his grave. Thomas Davis saw the peasants'
cabins pulled down by the landlords, and witnessed the suffer-
ing of the people, and he wrote:
"God of justice!" I sighed, "send Your spirit down
"On these lords so cruel and proud,
"And soften their hearts and relax their frown,
"Or else," I cried aloud —
"Vouchsafe Thy strength to the peasant's hand
"To drive them at length from off the land!"
"The prisoner concluded by saying, 'What did the Irish People
say worse than that? I have done no more than he has done;
sentence me to a felon's doom if you choose.' "
After his conviction Kickham was sent, with O'Leary, Luby,
Rossa and others to Pentonville Prison in London, and after nine
months there they were transferred to Portland, where the work
was stonecutting. Kickham was wholly unfitted for hard labor,
and in a little while was sent to the invalid prison at Woking,
where the work was lighter, but still too hard for a man in his
condition. He remained in Woking until his release, with sev-
eral others, in March, 1869, and came out broken in health.
312
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
After the election of O'Donovan Rossa as a Member of Par-
liament for Tipperary in 1869 had been annulled by the British,
there was a difference of opinion among the Nationalists of that
County as to the advisability of letting their protest rest there
or putting up another candidate. Finally Kickham was nomi-
nated. While he polled more votes than Rossa, the West British
candidate, Heron, considerably increased his poll of the previous
November, and defeated Kickham by a margin of four votes, the
poll being 1668 to 1664. Manhood suffrage was unknown in Ire-
land in those days. A debt was incurred for the expenses of the
two elections, and the money to pay it was raised later in
America.
The women of Tipperary made a beautiful green silk flag for
the Sixty-ninth Regiment of New York and T. P. O'Connor of
Laffana was sent out to present it. A committee was formed in
New York and it organized a great demonstration at Bellevue
Garden, at which General George B. McClellan, former Com-
mander of the Army of the Potomac, presented the flag to the
Regiment. "Little Mac" was the idol of the old soldiers and a
great throng crowded the park to witness the presentation.
Colonel James Cavanagh received it on behalf of the Sixty-ninth,
and enough money was collected to pay the Tipperary debt.
Though the Regiment carried a green flag, in addition to the
Stars and Stripes, in all its battles during the Civil War, this
green flag from Tipperary has never been used in public by the
Sixty-ninth, but has been kept in the regimental armory.
Kickham, after release, lived for a time in Mullinahone and
then moved to Dublin, where he made his home, first with his
brother Alexander, and then with James O'Connor, his fellow-
prisoner, who later became Member of Parliament for West
Wicklow. In Blackrock he was knocked down by a jaunting car
while crossing the street and the injuries which he sustained
shortened his life.
Some time during this period I received the only letter I ever
got from him, which showed the keen interest he took in current
literature. He asked me to get him a cheap copy of George
Eliot's "Adam Bede", as he had heard that American publishers
were in the habit of getting out cheap, paper covered editions
(pirated, of course), of the latest English books. I couldn't get
one and I heard he was greatly disappointed.
Before Kickham became Chairman of the Supreme Council
of the reorganized I. R. B., James F. X. O'Brien, who was after-
wards a Member of Parliament, filled that office for some time.
I don't know the date of Kickham's selection, but he was Chair-
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL
313
man in 1878, when I sent the cablegram to Parnell offering him
the support of the American organization (meaning the Clan-
na-Gael) on certain conditions. I sent it to Kickham asking
him to give it to Parnell. Kickham forwarded it without com-
ment, as he did not want to be held responsible for its contents.
When I went over in December of that year a meeting 
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